Coraline (2009)

Picasso mused that every child is born an artist, but that the hard part is how to remain one after they grow up. Nothing is more surreal or vivid than the imagination of a child, where even the most seemingly mundane experience can evoke stark fear or unbridled joy. It’s a frontier ripe for storytellers, the best of whom are still nurturing their inner rugrat, and it is what makes the 3D stop-motion animation of Coraline so mesmerizing.

Still, a film about children does not necessarily make it child-friendly. Based on Neil Gaiman‘s novel of the same name, Coraline’s baroque imagery might be too intense for very young audiences. If your kid is likely to be fazed by creepy rag dolls and giant insects, proceed with caution.

Eleven-year-old Coraline Jones (Dakota Fanning) and her family have just moved into an old Victorian that has been segmented into apartments. The girl is bored and lonely, and her parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) are workaholic writers with no time for her. They urge her to explore the house to keep her out of their hair.

Coraline complies. In a forgotten room, she happens upon a small door, the sort of portal that, in a different movie, might lead to the brain of John Malkovich. Coraline finds a skeleton key for the mystery door, but is disappointed to learn that it opens on to a brick wall.

At night, however, that door leads to a parallel universe that mirrors Coraline’s own life – only everything in this alternate world is way more fun and inviting. There she meets her Other Mother and Other Father, parents who are cheerful, loving and cater to Coraline’s every wish. The girl is lavished with sumptuous meals, magical gardens and irresistibly weird vaudeville shows that feature even more eccentric versions of her family’s eccentric neighbors (Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French and Ian McShane).

There’s only one downside, but it’s a doozy: All the inhabitants of this dreamscape have big, black buttons where their eyes would be. If Coraline wants to stay, explains her Other Mother, she must have buttons sewn over her peepers.

Smart and spunky Coraline learns the cost of getting everything you desire, as Coraline tweaks the self-absorption of childhood and its concomitant fantasy worlds. The theme is as old as the Brothers Grimm, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less salient.

“I’m way too old for dolls,” Coraline tells her mother at one point; fortunately for us, writer-director Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach) has no such hang-up. He stuffs this world with phantasmagoric imagery. Selick and crew reportedly spent two years in pre-production before tackling an 80-week shoot. The lovingly rendered puppetry and stop-motion effects were worth the effort. Deliriously inventive creatures amble with a herky-jerky rhythm teetering somewhere between the haunting movement of dreams and those of dimming memories.

Fanning lends a caustic edge to Coraline, while Hatcher captures the spooky side of perkiness. Also memorable is Keith David as a talking cat. What fantasy is complete without a talking cat?