REVIEW: Coraline (Cert PG)
Rather like Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, which he also directed, Henry Selick's Coraline (Cert PG) is a children's animated story which is likely to be appreciated more by adults.
As with the Neil Gaiman book on which it is based, it has aspects which younger audiences are liable to find disturbing.
Coraline, voiced by Dakota Fanning, moves with her parents into a new home in an old house. With her parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) too busy working to take any notice of her, she is left to her own devices to explore the building, an old house divided into apartments with an eccentric Russian circus owner on the top floor and two old actresses (Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders) in the basement.
But it is the discovery of a secret door which precipitates the adventure. It proves to be a portal to an alternate version of her life, where on the surface everything is so much better.
Her parents are happy and attentive, for a start, the only difference being that they have buttons for eyes.
That proves a sinister signal and she discovers that her Other Mother wants to keep her forever and the first step will be replacing her eyes with buttons, a frightening prospect for all of us, let alone tiny tots.
The chief pleasure of Coraline is, of course, its extraordinary gothic style and visual inventiveness with talking cats, flying mice and extraordinary contraptions.
While its story of a plucky girl who must find resourcefulness, determination and bravery to save herself and her family is child's stuff, there is that troubling darker undertone.
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Weather for Sheffield
Wednesday 23 May 2012
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