Movie Description
After creating a classic with THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, director Henry Selick crafts the first stop-motion animated feature to be filmed in three dimensions. Dakota Fanning voices a girl who finds a parallel universe lurking behind a door in her home, but the new world isn't all it initially appears. Based on Nail Gaiman's novel, CORALINE promises to be a favorite for both children and adults.
As covetous children are often warned: "Be careful what you wish for." It’s this very cautionary wisdom that sets the stage for Henry Selick’s CORALINE, an eerily eye-popping stop-motion animation tale of fractured dreams and families made whole. As the films opens, Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) and her parents (Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman) have moved into the Pink Palace, a once-vibrant boarding house that’s turned drab and dilapidated. As her parents work feverishly on a new gardening catalog, the bored and belligerent Coraline is admonished to explore her new world’s possibilities. Along the way she meets her fellow tenants, including two aging English showgirls and a mouse-training Russian acrobat, as well as an outcast neighborhood boy named Wybie. But it is a mysterious hidden door that most piques Coraline’s interest--a gateway to a parallel world where her "other" parents and neighbors live only to see Coraline well fed and endlessly entertained. All is not cakes and carnivals for Coraline, though, and the black buttons that have replaced the eyes of these otherworldly imitations hint at darker intentions. When these intentions are revealed, Cora and a friendly magical cat use their wits and willpower to defeat Coraline’s wicked "other mother" and restore balance in the real world. Based on Neil Gaiman’s beloved children’s novel, director Selick (THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS) uses the stop-motion technique to bring CORALINE to life with amazing visual and emotional depth. The result is a frightfully magical adventure that will give the whole family plenty to shriek, cheer, and talk about.
| Credits | | Producer: | Bill Mechanic, Claire Jennings, Henry Selick, Mary Sandell | | Cast: | Dawn French, Ian McShane, Jennifer Saunders, John Hodgman |
| Details | | Edition: | Canadian; 2-Disc Colelctor's Edition |
Editorial Reviews
3 stars out of 4 -- "[T]hose who tough it out with this twisted, trippy adventure in impure imagination will only be the better for it."
Rolling Stone - Peter Travers (02/05/2009)
"The third dimension comes of age with CORALINE....CORALINE is a remarkable feat of imagination, a magical tale with a genuinely sinister edge."
Los Angeles Times - Kenneth Turan (02/06/2009)
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "It's gorgeous to watch in all its dazzling stop-motion animation splendor....It's exquisite images have an undeniable whimsical appeal."
USA Today - Claudia Puig (02/06/2009)
"[Selick] stays at child's eye level, letting the 3D process subtly reinforce how a youngster's imagination can be more vivid and real than reality itself."
Box Office - Mark Keizer (02/06/2009)
"[A]n exquisitely realized 3-D stop-motion animated feature....CORALINE lingers in an atmosphere that is creepy, wonderfully strange and full of feeling."
New York Times - A. O. Scott (02/06/2009)
"Everyone's in love with someone in HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU, a not-quite-romantic-comedy....Slickly adapted by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein from the popular book....[The film] rolls out like an instructional soap opera."
Variety - John Anderson (02/01/2009)
"CORALINE is a dark delight....This eccentric and deliriously inventive fantasy finds stop-motion auteur Henry Selick scaling new heights of ghoulish whimsy, buoyed by a haunting score that works its own macabre magic."
Variety - Justin Chang (02/01/2009)
"This thrilling stop-motion animated adventure is a high point in Selick's career of crating handrcrafted wonderlands of beauty blended with deep, disconcerting creepiness." -- Grade: A
Entertainment Weekly - Lisa Schwarzbaum (02/13/2009)
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "The animation is absolutely breathtaking and should be seen in 3D to be fully enjoyed. The story is creepy fun..."
Premiere - Jenni Miller (02/06/2009)
"Selick's imaginative sets and puppets are in perfect pitch with Gaiman's fantasy. The 3-D effects aren't overdone but are used intelligently to make this world come brilliantly to life."
Hollywood Reporter - Kirk Honeycutt (02/02/2009)
"Selick has complete command of the 3-D format, adding eerie depth and texture to the image..."
Film Comment - Evan Davis (07/01/2009)
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