Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Coraline Movie Review

The creepy, bizarre but beautiful stop motion animated movie Coraline directed by Herny Selick's shows us the view of the world where Coraline is fighting with her every day life and her parents but then she enters to another world where everything is what she wanted before.





Who didn't dreamed from a perfect world and perfect parents before? Coraline was allowed to have the experience to get into this world where everything seems to be perfect. Have you ever heard the phrae "Be careful what you wish?". In the movie Coraline is about to learn the meaning of the phrase.



Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) is a thin eleven year old little girl who moves into a strange apartment with her mom (Teri hatcher) and her dad (John Hodgeman). Her parents are very busy and hard working because of this both them don't have enough time for her and don't pay enough attention to her, so she takes herself and discovers the surrounding. While she is exploring her new surrounding she meets the creepy kid Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr). After she explored the surrounding she gets back home. Her parents are hardworking all day long, so she starts to explore the house and she found a little door. She was so excited about her discovery that she ran to her mom and wanted her to open the door but she was really stressed out, so she said that when she'll open the door Coraline has to be quiet. Coraline agreed and her mom opened the door. When she opened the door coraline was really disappointed because there were just bricks behind the door.In the night she opened the door again and there was a tunnel, she went through and reached into a house that almost looked like her own house. There also was another woman who looked like her mom, also known as the other mother. everything seemed to be really nice, they payed attention, she cooked nicely meals for her and do all kinds of stuff what she always wanted from her real parents. The other parents are like her real 
parents but with one major difference they have black buttons for eyes. 

For the little figures they used puppets which they had to make a ton of Coralines for each scene. They made different parts of her face, so they just could change her mouth to make the puppet alive or they had make a ton of little tiny clothes. A really remarkable thing in the movie were the colors which are used for the surrounding and the houses. The colors are pointedl to support the creepy atmosphere which exists in the movie. In the movie espacially in Coraline's real world they used a lot of dark colors and grey shades but in the other world it is more colorful to make the difference of the two world more visible.




 

The soundtrack for Coraline performed by a french composer Bruno Coulais is very melancholy. The melancholy sound of the soundtrack and the rest of the music reminds the viewer on dreams. This squares with the fact that Coraline is dreaming from the other world. Furthermore the band The Might Be Giants composed a song "Other Father Song". This title matches with the movie and represents a part of it.

To sum up, one could say that Coraline learned to appreciate her real parents and that not everything can be perfect. My advise for all the parents is that I'm not sure about if the movie is appropriate for little children because sometimes it is really scarry, brutal and creepy. It depends on your child and how do you, as a parent talk to your child after watching the movie. Moreover I think it is more appropriate for teenager because they can learn that they may have to appreciate their parents more as they do right now. I'm thinking that the movie is fascinating because of the production and instructive because the movie made me think about if i really appreciate what my parents, family and friends are doing for me or themselves in person.