Movie Review: Coraline

"It's Coraline, not Caroline," as she insists throughout the movie. I can understand the confusion, as some of my friends have also mistaken this movie to be called Caroline. However, it isn't, "It's Coraline." As it refers to the lead character, Coraline Jones. Hell yeah...(inside joke to those in the know).
Anyways, this review is for the 3D version of Coraline, but I don't think my review would be much different if I saw it in regular 2D.
As you can guess from the stop animation style of the film, it is from Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and to a lessor extent and probably shouldn't mention, Monkeybone. And it is based off of the Neil Gaiman novella of the same name. Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher provide the voices of Coraline and her mother.
Coraline is indeed an interesting movie with lots of imagination in an exceedingly stylized universe from the mind crash of Gaiman and Selick. It's got a dash of Pan's Labyrinth, a splash of Alice in Wonderland, and well... a touch of Tim Burton, even though he isn't a part of this film. So if you like all those movies, then you will probably like Coraline.
The only downside of this film, is that some parts felt a bit long. And some of it may seem a tad dark for kids, especially the really young (which probably shouldn't see this film). Although, in the screening I was in, no kids were really crying or getting upset. Hopefully, they weren't all sleeping because this movie doesn't exactly have Shrek-like slapstick all over it.
Overall, Coraline is a good film and may catch a cult following like that of The Nightmare Before Christmas and we'll probably see memorabilia in store shelves like Hot Topic if they aren't already. See it in 3D, cause it's all the wave these days. And there is a really short 3D visual at the end of the credits.
3.5 out of 5


Running time 100 min.
Budget $75 million
US Gross: $16.3 million (as of 2/8/09)
Total Gross: $16.3 million (as of 2/8/09)