Coraline

Here's another film adaptation, this time, Neil Gaiman's great little book for 'kids', Coraline.

The book in this case was excellent, creepy and filled with imagery frightening even to adults. I enjoyed reading it years ago, but decided that it would be best to put off reading it to my children until they were a little older. I loved the book, as I love so much of his writing. My only real complaint would be the lack of a clear cut message. I mean, I understand that it is 'be careful what you wish for', I suppose, but at the same time, I never felt like anyone truly learned anything in the end...

much the same in the film. We'll get to that, however.

The movie adaptation has some excellent qualities, not the least of which is the incredible stop motion animation, brilliant art direction and use of color saturation. I'm sure all of this goes without saying if you've at least seen the trailers or a commercial in passing. It is nothing short of breathtaking to see something that seems so... flawless, yet perfectly flawed. My only regret was that I didn't see it in 3D.

The voice acting is good, but really, didn't exactly leap out at all.

Overall the story presented is fairly accurate to the original. The only glaring difference is that they felt watching a little girl wander around by herself might not translate well on screen, so they created an extra character for her to interact with: "Wybie". This was done quite skillfully, to the point that I actually had to think hard about whether he was in the original story or not.

In the end, I think it's a great movie for both kids and adults, and definitely worth the watch. A word of warning though, even with the bright colors and seemingly upbeat nature found in the ads, this is still a some what dark story. My youngest daughter spent most of that last half of the movie wrapped entirely around my arm, and she's seven. My nine year old girl seemed to handle it well enough.