by Mandy Wilks

Created on: September 23, 2010   Last Updated: September 24, 2010

Henry Selick, who directed the wonderful animated film "The Nightmare before Christmas" and “James and the Giant Peach”, has excelled himself with his charming 2009 film, "Coraline"; another wonderful animated film that is also a terrific children's story, and is adapted from a novel by the British writer Neil Gaiman. This story from Gaiman has the theme of the old adage "the grass is always greener" that takes place in a strange, weird and old house. The “Coraline” in question is eleven-year old Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) who, with her parents (voiced by Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) has recently moved into the Pink Palace Apartments. This is in fact like an old fashioned fairy story with a modern twist and is presented to a young audience in both an exciting and spine-chilling fashion; although this film has a PG rating, personally I wouldn’t allow a child under the age of around nine to watch it as it could well be a little scary for them, in fact there are certain parts that could even give them nightmares.

After the move Coraline really feels that her busy parents are ignoring her and are far more interested in their work as writers. This leaves Coraline to explore her strange new house, its grounds and her neighbours on her own.
She is though disappointed when she finds nothing of interest, and despite of the other residents in the Pink Palace are all rather eccentric, they don’t make her feel any better. These residents include a Russian circus performer (Ian McShane), a chatty little boy Wybie Lovat (Robert Bailey Jr.), two aging British actresses (Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French) and a rather mangy cat (Keith David).

However things begin to look up when Coraline discovers a secret door; through this door she entered a long tunnel where she finds an alternative world to the Pink Palace. In this world her parents loving and attentive, her eccentric neighbours are FAR more entertaining and even the cat talks!
 
On waking and finding the secret door still boarded up with bricks Coraline is she must have been dreaming.  But she certainly wasn’t dreaming and she begins to love her alternative world, but is this world as good as it seems?
Are Coraline and her real parents safe?

I have to say that I really enjoyed the film; after a bit of a slow start I thought that the story was good, the plot very clever and film, was very well produced and directed in my opinion, but as I said earlier

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