Madre's Missives

With a 6 yr old son, I’ve become a connoisseur of kid movies.  I’ve actually come to enjoy some of them.  Not this one.
 

My kid’s not entirely normal either.  I dragged him out to for Ghost Rider in the theater with my high school youth group.  It was a 9pm show - already past his normal bedtime. I figured I’d just pay for him to have an expensive nap.  He was glued to the screen.  “Did you see that man’s HEAD was on FIRE??  Johnny Blaze is SO COOL!!”  A few days later, he confessed to me that he was afraid of the giant pickles in the Veggie Tales movie they had watched at preschool.  And I really wanted to go see Twilight, so on a whim I took him to that too.  I had read the books so I knew there wasn’t any sex or serious violence.  He loved that one and is very proud of the fact that he has seen a PG-13 movie at age 6.  He’s also a huge fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas, and when the commercials said there was another one by the same director (not that he knows what a movie director does), he was all over it.

So we went to see Coraline tonight, and he spent a good portion of the movie hiding in my armpit.  I can’t even imagine how much worse it would’ve been if our theater could do 3-D too.  (At least I avoided the vertigo problems that go with those!)  The graphics and cinematography were amazing, which was to be expected.

But the storyline and the imagery themselves lacked creativity, or at least originality.  I haven’t read the book, maybe it’s better than the movie.  But Coraline was a stop-action filmed rehash of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Lookingglass meets The Wizard of Oz stopping by and visiting with the Brothers Grimm with huge nods to Poltergeist and The Matrix.

We’ve all seen and heard the Disney-fied cartoon-y adaptations of our favorite fairy tales and had them all crashing down when we encounter the “original” versions of them. The real stories of Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Alice in Wonderland, and the Wizard of Oz can all be pretty scary.  Coraline dives into the scary version of the story without the niceties of the “kid” version - but does it in a supposedly kid-friendly animated format with a PG rating.  Isaac asked on the way home from the theater, “Where were the funny parts?  Aren’t kid movies supposed to have funny parts?”  Yeah, they are.  There weren’t any in this one.  Attempts to be funny ended up just being creepy and scary.
 

So here’s the gist of the story - there’s not much more to it than you get in the previews.  Coraline’s parents are busy and don’t have time for her nonsense.  They’ve recently moved to a new home (which, of course, happens to be ancient).  To keep her out of their hair, she’s sent exploring in the house.  She finds a miniature door in a parlor, but it’s been wallpapered over.  Coraline convinces her mom to unlock the door...and it reveals a brick wall. 

But some mice conveniently wake Coraline during the night and disappear through the tiny door, she discovers that it actually leads to a mirror-world where everything and everyone caters to her every whim.  She quickly finds out the catch - the “other mom” wants her to stay there forever, and in order to do so she has to give up her will and become a doll like the others there - all depicted by their button-eyes.

Once the illusion of perfection is over and Coraline realizes she doesn’t want to stay, her “other mother” throws her into a dungeon where 3 ghosts of other children trapped in the mirror-world explain that the only way to free their still-trapped souls is to find their missing eyes.  Oh, and the “other mother” manages to trap Coraline’s real parents in the mirror-world too - well actually, in a snowglobe of the Detroit Zoo.

Long story short (and minus much of the creepiness), Coraline challenges the “other mother” to a game and defeats her by finding the ghost children’s missing eyes.  Coraline escapes, and eventually throws the one key to the mini-door and the other world into a deep well, never to be found again. 
 

If that was what they stuck with, the movie could’ve been appropriate for the PG rating and kids’ seeing it.  But of course they didn’t.  Tons of issues that are still inappropriate for young children are brought up over and over.  There is unnecessary sexual innuendo between Coraline and her disgusting Russian-circus-mouse-trainer neighbor, Mr. Bobinsky - and not the funny fart-joke kind either.
 

Coraline’s other neighbors are two elderly sisters, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible - retired showgirls who display their collection of taxidermized former pet schnauzers like knick-knacks on a shelf wearing little angel costumes, complete with golden wings.  Later on, Miss Spink is seen fitting a costume to a still-living dog because “He’s looking a little sickly...”  The other sister, Miss Forcible, is well...quite...buxom, and in one scene she is performing on stage set with costuming supposed to resemble Venus on a Half Shell with glittery pasties and a thong.  Coraline’s comment is a disgusted and amazed, “Oh...my...god...she’s practically NAKED!”  Isaac’s comment was, “She has REALLY BIG milk thingies.” (He’s 6.  I’m not going there until I have to.  Deal with it.)
 

Those were the most offensive parts.  Despite what the movie poster states, Coraline does not say “Oh my gosh,” it is actually a couple of repeated “Oh...my...god” comments.  Had Speed Racer not used “Jesus Christ” as an expletive, I might not have even paid attention.  And no one, adult much less a child, should ever see a supposedly 80+ yr old, overweight woman in a sparkly thong and pasties.

The whole idea sucked into a haunted house/nightmare world where everything turns out to be evil, including the image of Coraline looking into the light coming into the darkened room through mini-door (“Walk into the light, Carol-Ann...”) is a poor copy of Poltergeist.  The tunnel and other world with clever adventures, complete with a cheshire cat is very Lewis Carroll.  Encountering loved ones made over into similar but different characters is reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz.  And the protagonist having the choice to remain in a world she knows is not real or to exit into the real world which falls apart into artistically digitized whiteness as the power of the imaginary world wanes, a is very much a nod to The Matrix, only way less cool and not nearly as intellectual.

Rent it if you must see it.  And definitely not with young kids.