[img]7|left|||no_popup[/img]Henry Selick’s role in ushering what may described as the modern age of stop-motion animation – counter-programming to the glut of CGI films – naturally sets up a certain kind of expectation for this latest dark fantasy tale of children in peril. Artistically, Selick delivers. “Coraline” is a beautiful universe of set and character designs that start out feeling like Tim Burton’s sketchpad but quickly come to have their own identity. As the heroine creeps through a fallopian tube of a tunnel between two alternate versions of her home, the shift between the normal and the surreal highlights the visual imagination of Selick’s team. “Coraline” is a marvel of creaky houses riffing on the haunted Victorian, and living gardens of glowing and spirited flowers. The characters, though not marked by that stick-in-your-head quirkiness of the seminal “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” range from tomboyish Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) herself to a grizzled black cat with interdimensional travel abilities (voiced by Keith David) and a menagerie of eccentrics ranging from a flexible circus performer to aged showgirls with a hobby of reading tea-leaves and collecting antique candies.

Keeping the film from achieving the cult-now-mainstream obsession that grew around “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” however, may well lie in Neil Gaiman, whose novella for children is the film’s foundation, more so than Selick. I have to admit that, as of yet, I haven’t been bowled over by Gaiman despite recognizing in him a deep well of imagination. If the book is anything like the movie – and he follows the pattern his other non-Sandman works – Gaiman is like a literary Joss Whedon; an idea-man who stumbles with the execution.

“Coraline” begins with the titular 12-year-old in a situation that is horrific in its own right; emotional isolation from parents too deeply immersed in work to pay attention to their daughter. But it’s not just the neglect associated with worrying about money and working to pull on those bootstraps that sets the tone. It’s the surprisingly base meanness – Coraline’s mother is downright hostile – underlying the parental indifference that creates a bleak but cartoony contrast to the temptation Coraline finds in that wondrous-but-creepy parallel world in which the love is as plentiful as a food – provided you can get past the whole buttons-for-eyes thing. The mirror-world premise is wonderful, similar to other Gaiman stories like “Mirrormask,” but different enough to earn its own story. Yet the characterizations – neglected child finds a seductive, but illusory, solace in a wonderland – are simple. Coraline herself has all the depth of an action movie hero, and the parents are turned around so quickly at the end that it’s dizzying. Worse of all: “Coraline” starts out as a slow-simmering psychological thriller, changes gears, and becomes a video game narrative. Selick (Gaiman, really) has Coraline bouncing around from task to task, collecting objects in an effort to defeat the Foozle, to the point that the dominant reaction to the film is resentment towards Selick for hogging the game controller. That’s no way to feel about a movie. “Coraline” has the looks, and lovely 3D, but that’s about it. And that’s no way to feel about a movie with such imaginative potential.

Entertainment Value: * (out of two)

Technical Quality: ** (out of two)

Coraline. Written and directed by Henry Selick, based on the novella by Neil Gaiman. With the voices of: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman, and Keith David. 101 minutes. Rated PG (for thematic elements, scary images, some language and suggestive humor).

Frédérik invites you to discuss "Coraline" and more at his blog.