Just got back from watching Coraline.

Wow… I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kid’s movie that was less appropriate for children other than perhaps Urotsukidoji. In seriousness though, it was a fantastic adaptation of the book. There was a slight deviation from the book (there always is, isn’t there) in the creation of the character ‘Wybourne’. Why he was added baffles me, and I can only thing it was to add some sort of love interest, because all preteens need one of those, right? But hey, read the book for yourself and decide which version you like better. I think the character of Wybourne adds a little bit more depth to Coraline’s character.

Casting for this movie was pretty well done. Dakota Fanning as Coraline. She’s a precocious brat, so it works nicely. Whilst I didn’t exactly agree with the casting of Terri Hatcher as the mother, that they made the animated figurine look somewhat like she used to in the old Lois & Clarke series helped it along nicely and seemed to ease her into the  role… the flat head helped especially. The Cat, for me at least, was the most interesting pick. You’re going to watch this film and scratch your head wondering where the hell you’ve heard this guy’s voice before… because he’s in every bloody Xbox game worth playing! And he was also Goliath in Gargoyles, which you know you watched as a kid, even if you’d like to pretend you didn’t.

Visually speaking, this movie is amazingly good. Stop motion animation is always hard, and there are two recognised masters of it, Aardman films, and Burton’s team on Nightmare Before Christmas. The fluidity of animation, particularly of the ‘Other Mother’ after she’s transformed, is astounding, and to be honest, rather creepy at times.

The choice of soundtrack was interesting. As the movie is based of a children’s book, and is ostensibly aimed at children (very fucked up children who are going to be come the next generation of Goths, just like NMBC did with all the kids in the early 90s), it would be safe to assume that the sound track would also be somewhat aimed at children. However, you’d be amazingly wrong. The score, or at least the parts you’re going to remember, are a bloody creepy children’s choir for the ‘real’ world, and rather up beat orchestral melodies for the ‘other’ world… It fits the mood perfectly.

It needs to be stated that I saw this film in 3D, which I think really probably added to the experience in a big way. The added depth of field helped in no small way when it comes to the suspension of disbelief, and I’m thinking that a lot of animations will probably seem more “real” using 3D display technologies. With that said, the effect was let down by the a lot of red/green shift happening to things further back in the depth-of-field when they were dark colours. Just something to keep in mind if you decide to see this in 3D as well.

In the Goth Club movie rating system, I give this film four spinning blue penises.

Go and see it in 3D before it finishes atthe cinema, because the 60″ screen with 7.1 Doly surround sound that you call a home theater system is still 2D bile  in comparison.