Coraline

Is it sad that I was the only person in a tiny theater on a friday afternoon watching an animated film ostensibly targeted at children? Possibly. Would I rather interpret this as a further indication of my supreme self - confidence and not a sign of my complete lack of social skills? Yes, yes I would. Am I going to continue asking rhetorical questions? Highly Likely. Have I made a similar joke several times before? Shut Up.

Anyway, for a film aimed at kids Coraline really has some dark and subversive undertones. The film follows the titular heroine as she moves into a new house and deals with increasingly inattentive parents. She's follows a secret door to an alternate reality that appears to be everything she ever wanted but everyone has buttons for eyes (no big deal right, I could totally deal with it). Anyway things are of course not as nice as they seem, and some really screwed up stuff happens that I can't imagine small children come away from unscathed., and of course means that I enjoyed the film immensely. Its based on a book by Neil Gaiman (whose work I always enjoy) and the filmmakers do a good job keeping his darkly twisted, yet comic, style prevalent throughout the film. The film's stopmotion animation also looks great, and very similiar to the nightmare before christmas (since both films shares a director with its not surprising). My only problem is that the ending feels rushed, and I wish they would have taken an extra 10 minutes to really draw out the tension.

The film that I was most reminded of while watching this was actually Pan's Labyrinth. In both films the female protagaonist tries to escape her dreary and opressive existence by engaging into a dream world whose lines with 'reality' are increasingly blurred (okay in the latter film she's tying to cope with living in Franco's Spain, and this one she's really just trying to find someone to give her attention but run with me on this). Thankfully Coraline doesn't end on the devastating note that Pan does or you'd see a bunch of eight year olds chain smoking outside of multiplexes as they try to come to grips with the emotional devastation they just witnessed.

Anyway check it out.