Coraline Jones (Dakota Fanning) is unhappy. Her parents have just moved the family to the middle of nowhere, taking up residence in a gigantic pink apartment house next to an ill-kept garden adjacent to the creepiest looking woods anyone has ever seen. Topping it off, they’re absorbed writing their new book they’ve been unable to spend a single fun-filled second with her, the petulant daughter wishing she could just be whisked away and live with parents who appreciated the gifts she has to offer them.

Some doors should remain lost in Focus Features' Coraline

As the old adage says, be careful what you wish for, because when Coraline finds a mysterious door leading to a magical parallel world she quickly discovers once the candy-colored glow of having your heart’s desire is realized what’s left isn’t exactly wonderful. Instead she finds herself trapped face-to-face with the ghosts of stolen children past, a button-eyed “Other Mother” (Teri Hatcher) malevolently looking for a way to convince the little girl to let the web-spinning women literally love the life right out of her.

Coraline is a beautiful movie. When I say beautiful, I mean visually, not as a whole (although it is admittedly quite good), its eye-popping array of multicolor treats so phantasmagoric it is arguably the most audaciously spellbinding ocular treat to hit theaters since director Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe. Henry Selick, the man responsible for making Jack Skellington fly in The Nightmare Before Christmas and Miss Spider dance upon her web in James and the Giant Peach has simply outdone himself, this 3D stop-motion fable a perfectly delectable sensation children of all ages are sure to delight in.

Based on the book by celebrated author Neil Gaiman (whose works also were the inspiration for the criminally underrated Stardust), there is a delightful whimsy here hard to resist. This was one of those movies where I actually began to believe anything was possible, and from giant circus tents filled to the brim with dancing mice or Technicolor gardens springing to life with animalistic gaiety so much happens within each scene that individual frames are all magnificent works of art ready for museum display.

Yet it is not perfect. The film tends to drag, scenes piling one into the other like a series of vignettes culled from shorts and haphazardly assembled into one full-length motion picture. This causes some choppiness to form in the narrative, Coraline moving back and forth between the worlds so many times her whole journey comes close to being on the verge of becoming frustratingly indulgent. It is almost as if Selick fell so in love with the pretty images he and his amazing team were able to create he suddenly felt unable to trim even a second of it once inside the editing room, scenes working marvelously when judged by themselves yet still feeling a tad redundant when taken into context.

Thankfully the delicious final act is so strong, so sinister, so exciting and, most of all, fun, I was able to forget any reservations I might have had without any problem whatsoever. Other Mother becomes an instantly classic villainous nearly on par with Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty or the Sea Witch in The Little Mermaid. Her and Coraline’s battle of wills is one for the adolescent history books, young and old alike able to happily delight as the two valiantly struggle for victory.

It helps considerably that composer and They Might Be Giants band member Bruno Coulais’ score is an ethereal symphony mirroring the operatic events perfectly. It is a continually haunting aria of magic and imagination, fitting the movie so well it becomes impossible to imagine the film without it.

Most of all, though, I just can’t get over how splendiferous it all just looked projected there upon the big screen, Coraline becoming a 3D winner and the best 2009 release I’ve seen so far this year. If there has ever been a case of visual style winning out over substance than this is that case, Selick weaving a web of almost ridiculous beauty I can recall moment after moment where I was left ecstatically breathless. It is a film, in the end, to treasure, and if families don’t take the time to discover it than they’ll be missing out on a creepily angelic sensation audiences are sure to come away cheering.

- review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle 

Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)  

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