Eye Candy #129 - "Coraline"

Coraline: I will say this for Neil Gaiman, when he gets a particular idea in his craw, he’s going to milk it more than once. You can see the repetition of themes in his novels “American Gods” and “Anansi Boys”, as well as his films like “Mirrormask” and “Coraline”. Coraline is a young, blue-haired girl that moves to a decrepit “apartment building” in Oregon. It’s a rundown house, subdivided into apartments, surrounded by a dead garden, and inhabited by eccentrics. Her mother and father spend most of their time ignoring her. While exploring her new home, she finds a small, hidden door into another world, identical to her own except the parents there (Other Mother and Other Father) are loving and caring, the garden is in bloom, and everything is just generally better. Except that all the people have buttons for eyes, there is a hint of something vaguely sinister going on, and nothing is as it appears to be. Directed by Henry Selick, visually this feels a lot like “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “James and the Giant Peach” (both also from Selick and done in the stop-motion animation style, which is refreshing in a field of computer generated hullabaloo). Full of weird imagery and general strangeness, “Coraline” is a much more successful effort than “Mirrormask”, though they do have some strong parallels (young female protagonists, malevolent mother figures). The voice cast is comprised of Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Keith David, French & Saunders, and the immortal Ian McShane. Definitely worth a look, but not really for kids as there are some images that could be disturbing (like, for example, vampire Scottish terriers with large bat wings). Woodchuck sez, “Check it out.”