by Peter Johns

Created on: February 22, 2009   Last Updated: May 25, 2009

I went to this movie expecting to have a great experience due to the favorable reviews at rottentomatoes.com. Unfortunately I was a bit disappointed. That's fine, not every movie is everyone's cup of tea. I still recommend it as a video.

Based on the book "Coraline" by Neil Gaiman, this movie is about a little girl who goes on an adventure of parallel worlds, alternate realities and treacherous temptations. It's definitely not for kids, and adults may find it a bit dark and slow moving - except for the effects and cinematography.

On the bright side it did tap into the nostalgic areas of my mind. I found myself remembering pieces of childhood that related to scenes of the movie in an uncanny way. That's a testament to Selick's genius; he has a unique way of displaying the mind in such an abstract manner as to persuade you to connect with it on a very personal level, as if he were talking about your past.

Have you ever had a dream that made no sense? That's most of this movie in a nutshell. At a certain point I actually decided to not try so hard to understand exactly what was going on, and I began to enjoy it more. What occurred to me is that it looks like a stream of dream sequences mixed with bits of old fairy tales. Perhaps Henry Selick remembers his dreams a lot more vividly than the rest of us. Whatever the situation, he's definitely a genius when it comes to cinematography.

Coraline reminded me of an angry german fairy tale that teaches: "drugs might make you feel good, but you could end up stuck in 'drug world' (a coma?), and destroy your parents in the process." The main character, Coraline, travels between two parallel worlds, one of which is a lot better version of the other. Eventually the "better" world begins to turn ugly, and that's the perfect metaphor for drugs. (Perhaps the other world represents an escape from her dull, gray life.)

The rest is a bit of a spoiler.

It also teaches: "Kids, be happy with what you have, or a stranger may kidnap you and stick you in a cold stone room with dead people, and you'll end up becoming delirious and think you need to save their souls."

There's also the cliche of the scary looking character with the smokey voice turning out to be the good guy, and the "pretty, nice parallel woman" - who gives Coraline all the nice treats she wants - but then turns into a black widow and tries to eat her; "Don't take candy from strangers." But many great movies have their share of cliches too.

The overall moral: "Not all scary looking people are bad, and not all 'nice women' are good."

Regarding the reviews on Rottentomatoes, I'm surprised since that site operates based on the averaging of hundreds of reviews from around the country. It's hard to go wrong when it's done that way, but in my personal opinion I think a lot of the critics may have experienced a little of the "Emperor's clothing syndrome." In other words, they may not have been entirely sure what was going on all of the time, so they simply focused more on what was obviously good - the effects and cinematography - and based their reviews on that.

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