Coraline

Animator and stop-motion director Henry Selick has up to now had every right to be more than a little pissed off really. While it is certainly true that the idea for The Nightmare Before Christmas came from Tim Burton, the dashing ghoulish mayhem that so delights its many devotees was really entirely down to Selick. So while Disney now annually trots out “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” to the theaters on Halloween week, the chorus line audience still claps and cheers remaining largely unaware of who the hell Henry Selick even is.

Well all that hopefully is about to change. Working from a massively successful, award-winning story from the king of literary kook, Neil Gaiman, Selick has fashioned another gothic fairytale that blends the devilish and the delightful into a glorious 3D spectacle of color and imagination.

The story follows the precocious young girl, Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) whose parents move the family out to a rickety old Victorian mansion way up in the hills outside Portland. Bogged down in their crusty, bohemian existence, her parents spend all their time writing a gardening catalogue and have next to no time for their daughter. Bored and lonely Coraline explores the house and the hillside, running into neighbor boy Wybie (short for Why Be Born – parents don’t get much sympathy in Coraline) who tells her that her new home has a history of disappearing kids. That night a troupe of jumping circus mice show her to a mystical portal to a mirror world where everyone has buttons for eyes and her parents are loving and dote on her endlessly. She can stay forever if she wants to; all she has to do is give herself, and her eyes, to her new family.

Inspired by the somewhat peculiar phenomenon of koumpounophobia (the fear of buttons), Gaiman has delivered another of his trademark fables of impish self-discovery. Crafted by Selick this creaky old structure is alive with possibility. It’s a positively tactile world and as the tirelessly playful Coraline tears around the house, swinging on doors, counting everything that is blue (her father’s idea, to keep her out of the way), the drips from the window echo and you can practically smell the rust.

It’s a story that throws you back to that very singular part of your life when your curiosity burned intensely, but you were still so young and your world so small. At one point, Coraline wanders too far in the mirror realm and literally encounters the edge of the world. It’s a story, very simply, about family and about home. Of course, it wouldn’t be Gaiman if the other apartments were not home to a few trademark, eccentric grotesques and its there that the more English rays of Gaiman’s humor shine through. British comedy duo French and Saunders lend their voices to a couple of monstrously boisterous old dears, with a penchant for tea and knitting angel outfits for the dead ranks of their pet army of Scottish Terriers. Also present is Ian McShane’s deranged acrobat, who spends his time drilling his troupe of mice for an upcoming show.

But it’s in the mirror world where things are truly taken to new heights with a series of blistering set pieces that are just a joy to behold starting with a tour of the garden bursting with color and life. The circus mice perform their show and the two Old Dear’s put on a scantily clad burlesque act that pushes the film’s PG rating right to the wall.

It’s as delightfully whimsical as it sounds and more, but somewhere around the hour mark when Mirror Mother’s true intentions are revealed and we learn the fate of the children that came before Coraline, things take a sharp left turn toward the decidedly creepy. While always pulling back from full on terror, there is certainly enough imagery here in the way of giant mechanical insects, carnivorous plant life, and an oubliette filled with ghost children that insure this will join the stable of children’s movies best enjoyed after you’ve grown up a little.

But if you can manage to keep hold of your slushy this is a rich, textured story that will both delight and terrify the young and the old, while reminding us that there is no emotion quite so exhilarating and pure as unfettered wonder.

Starring: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Robert Baily Jr. Keith David, Ian McShane

Director: Henry Selick

Runtime: 100 Minutes

Rating: PG

Distributor: Focus Features