Coraline Review

Coraline, an animated children's movie based on a book written by Neil Gaiman, was directed by screenwriter, HenrySelick. The main character, Coraline, who is played by Dakota Fanning, was a 13 year old only child who felt neglected by her parents, played by Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman, after moving into their new home in The Pink Palace. The Pink Palace sounded grand but was not very colorful or fun at all. At least not until Coraline passed through the door to another dimension.

 

After moving into her new home, Coraline explores the house and comes accross a door sealed behind the wall paper. She has her mother find the key and finds out that it has been bricked up, or so she thinks. That night, she gets led back to the door and now finds it to be a magic portal to another world; one that looked almost identical to her hown except brighter and better. She meets her "other" parents who are exciting and loving at first, but later on seem a little off. It became apparent that the "other mother" was running the show and had control over everyone in this mysterious world. She was able to control them by sewing buttons on their eyes. Everyone had button eyes, except Coraline, but the "other mother" was determined to change that. After traveling back and forth between the two worlds a few times, she becomes confused and doesn’t know which world is better. The "other mother" traps Coraline's real parents in order to lure Coraline back over. Anticipating a tough fight, Coraline puts her game face on and enters into the other dimension for what she hopes to be her last visit.

 

Coraline was made in stop-animation, taking over 18 months to complete. Each set, character, item of clothing, and facial expression was handmade on a miniature scale and captured frame by frame. It took about 24 frames to make just one second of film. That means 24 little changes to the picture, done by hand. The character dolls were made out of a mechanical skeleton and covered in modeling silicon, both making the characters easy to move. Hundreds of faces were made for each character to snap onto their skeleton heads. Clothing and hair had to be made with wire in order to move them in every frame. This movie was certainly made by dedicated artists who probably had no lives for a year and a half.

 

On top of the handmade models and sets, there were more special effects that had to be added. Things like rolling fog and growing plants had to be done partially on the computer as well. The fog was actually dry ice being poured over the set and captured on film so that later, the "fog crew" could piece the fog together on the computer to make it move around the characters. The growing, vibrant flowers were also a challenge. They used fiber optics and paper flowers to put together a shot in the garden scene of the growing flowers popping out of the ground. In conclusion, more than just modeling artists were needed; light and computer nerds were needed too.

 

Overall, this movie was definitely one to watch and appreciate after seeing the finished project. Between the imagination of the writers and the talent of the filmmakers, Coraline was interesting and awe inspiring. I may not recommend it for young kids, but it will be one to watch later on.