Coraline (2009)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

Henry Selick

Writers (WGA):

Henry Selick (screenplay)
Neil Gaiman (book)

Release Date:

6 February 2009 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Adventure | Family | Fantasy

Tagline:

Be careful what you wish for.

Plot:

An adventurous girl finds another world that is a strangely idealized version of her frustrating home, but it has sinister secrets.

Plot Keywords:

Secret Door | Parent | Young Girl | High Dive | Bicycle

Cast

Dakota Fanning	...	Coraline Jones (voice)
Teri Hatcher	...	Mel Jones / Other Mother / Beldam (voice)
Jennifer Saunders	...	Miss April Spink / Other Spink (voice)
Dawn French	...	Miss Miriam Forcible / Other Forcible (voice)
Keith David	...	The Cat (voice)
John Hodgman	...	Charlie Jones / Other Father (voice)
Robert Bailey Jr.	...	Wybie Lovat (voice)
Ian McShane	...	Mr. Sergei Alexander Bobinsky / Other Bobinsky (voice)
Aankha Neal	...	Sweet Ghost Girl (voice)
George Selick	...	Ghost Boy (voice)
Hannah Kaiser	...	Tall Ghost Girl (voice)
Harry Selick	...	Photo Friend #1 (voice)
Marina Budovsky	...	Photo Friend #2 (voice)
Emerson Hatcher	...	Magic Dragonfly (voice)
Jerome Ranft	...	Mover (voice)

Also Known As:

Coraline & the Secret Door (Australia) (promotional title)
Coraline y la puerta secreta (Argentina) (Mexico) (Peru) [es]
Coraline (Finland: Swedish title) [sv]
Coraline e a Porta Secreta (Portugal) [pt]
Coraline e la Porta Magica (Italy) [it]
Coraline e o Mundo Secreto (Brazil) [pt]
Coraline ja salajane uks (Estonia) [et]
Coraline ja toinen todellisuus (Finland) [fi]
Coraline och spegelns hemlighet (Sweden) [sv]
Coraline og den hemmelige dør (Norway) [no]
Coraline, to spiti stin omihli (Greece) [el]
Koralin ve gizli dünya (Turkey: Turkish title) [tr]
Koralina i tajemnicze drzwi (Poland) (poster title) [pl]
Koralina v strane koshmarov (Russia) [ru]
Los Mundos de Coraline (Spain) [es]

MPAA:

Rated PG for thematic elements, scary images, some language and suggestive humor.

Runtime:

UK:96 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Russian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital

Certification:

USA:PG (certificate #45001) | UK:PG | Finland:K-7 | Ireland:PG | Brazil:Livre | Portugal:M/6 (Qualidade) | Argentina:13 | Peru:PT | South Korea:All | Hong Kong:IIA | Mexico:A | Netherlands:6 | Sweden:11 | Iceland:L | Switzerland:7 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:7 (canton of Vaud) | Canada:G (Quebec) | Canada:PG (Alberta/British Columbia/Manitoba/Ontario) | New Zealand:PG | Singapore:PG | France:U | Australia:PG

Filming Locations:

Portland, Oregon, USA

Company:

Focus Features

Trivia:

Coraline (2009) is similar to another Neil Gaiman work, MirrorMask (2005), which also featured a dark, parallel world that was a distorted version of our own. People in our world would be there in the other but playing different roles.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Other Father starts playing the piano, the piano gloves go on his hands while he is facing Coraline. After he turns around, the gloves switch hands.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Coraline Jones: [after hearing a creature while exploring the hills] Hello? Who's there?

Movie Connections:

References The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Soundtrack:

Dreaming

Very enjoyable fantasy with superb animation

Henry Selick's "Coraline" is a smart adaptation of Neil Gaiman's extremely popular award-winning novella. Selick's screenplay is excellent and faithful without being a carbon-copy of Gaiman's story, and Selick adds some of his own dialogue to the film, so his contribution is most certainly not only visual, and chooses which dialogue to use from the novel wisely. Less of a horror story than the novella and more of a dark fantasy, "Coraline" features a well-written and well-drawn lead character and brings the novel's bizarre world to life without compromise. The film's fantasy world grows more bizarre each time we see it, and is as discomforting as it is fun. I missed the singing rats from the novella, but this was more than compensated for by the visual splendor of the garden scene, and there are numerous other examples of the changes from the novel making total sense as Selick's vision of the story differs from Gaiman, but doesn't betray the original work of art, only compliments it. The voice cast is very good and one cannot praise the spectacular animation enough. I was very pleased with the 3D presentation here, it was very, very rarely (only once or twice) used as a 'cool effect', and overall was very tastefully used to give the visuals more depth. Perhaps the first really good film to have a wide release in 2009, and looking at the next few weeks I see more than one film I'm moderately interested in, so this might end up being a pretty good year.