Coraline Movie Review

       




      Henry Selick writer and director of this 3D stop motion film based on the terrifying, hooking book Coraline created by Neil Gaiman, includes some important stars to make the film come alive. Coraine played by Dakota Fanning, and other important characters like her mom and dad played by Teri Hatcher and John Hodgeman, these are only a few people who influenced this movie to become one of a kind.
            Coraline Jones a very outgoing and kind little girl moves to a house called the Pink Palace, in a small town of Oregon. Being little kid in a new place of course she wants to explore new things which leaves her to finding this hidden door in her house. Behind this door is a whole marvelous world, that is just like her real world but way better. In her other world she is mistreated by her real parents, and in this other world her fake parents who have buttons for eyes, treat Coraline like a princess. She thinks everything about this world is wonderful. Every time she goes to sleep in this amazing other world, she wakes up in her real world, which makes her sad because she was having such a fun time. Soon Coraline realizes this other world is not right for her when her fake parents become controlling and insists Coraline stays in their world, so they can sew buttons on her eyes. If she agrees, she will never get to see her real parents again. Obviously she chose her real parents which makes the fake mom angry. She traps her real parents behind a mirror to protect them. Being as smart and persuading as Coraline is, she wants to make a deal with the fake mom. The deal is if she finds the souls of three other children the fake mom locked in this other world, she gets her parents back in exchange. The fake mom loves to play games so it should be an interesting twist of events. Who will win? The evil fake mom? Or the innocent little Coraline?

            An aspect of this film making in this movie was  the costume design. Every outfit was very detailed and all hand-made. They start with a wire body to make it much easier to move the characters around, and then create hand-sewn costumes. In case anything goes wrong, the make extra costumes. Also say she fell in mud in the movie they would have to make a whole new costume and add on mud or other accessories, these people are constantly making outfits until the movie is all finished. Coraline's hair is inserted one strand at a time. Another feature Coraline has are removable faces, allowing her to have different facial expressions, as the unique voices help express each characters personalities and emotions. 
            Another aspect of this film was the directing. They made this whole movie come to life, one example was all the props they used like the Pink Palace house, the garden and all the rooms were built and made by special builders. The prop size was bigger than the people on the set and the characters were as small as their hand. In one scene, Coraline was walking through fog, and you would think in an animation movie they would just add fog, but they actually got dry ice and poured the ice from above (creating fog) so it would stay on the flat surface. This demonstrated innovative thinking and originality. Filming each character was done by moving them inch by inch. This task took the team months to accomplish. This film took an extreme amount of patience, sweat and tears to make everything they did worth all the hard work. It obviously was worth it because it was an outstanding movie. 

            My overall reaction to this movie was that it truly amazed me that someone can actually do something like this when you put your mind to it. The work and effort every person on set put towards this movie is very impressive and admirable. Originally, I thought the 3-D animation film was scary. But, once I kept watching I thoroughly enjoy every second of it. It takes talent to do what these film makers do. I applaud everyone involved in the making of this great movie.