Coraline Movie Review

    The movie Coraline is the first stop-motion feature shot in stereoscopic 3D. Which, simply put, means it was the first movie in 3D where in every scene the animators had to stop and very carefully move the dolls. The movie was based off of a book by Neil Gaiman called Coraline as well. The movie is about a young girl who finds a fantasy world where everyone loves her until she finds out about it's dark secret.  It takes place at the Pink Palace Apartments, a fictional place where Coraline and her family moved to in Oregon. Dakota Fanning plays the main character, Coraline Jones. Terri Hatcher (of Desperate Housewives) plays Mel Jones (the real mother) and Other Mother and John Hodgman plays Charlie Jones (the real father) and Other Father.

    The movie is about a young girl who feels neglected by everyone at her new home until she finds a secret magic door that takes her to another world. In this "Other World" she is loved and cared for by everyone until she discovers the truth and this new world becomes hostile and tries to keep her there forever so Coraline uses her bravery and resourcefulness to escape.

    Since Coraline used such amazing 3D imagery, they had to use thousands of different angles for all the shots that they took so that they could have such a high quality production. They also had to use make 24 different scenes in real life with the dolls they used for every second that was used in the movie which amounted to over 8 million shots taken. Fortunately, they used a special camera that was mounted on a sliding pedestal that automatically slid into the next shot that had to be taken and all the animators had to do was move the dolls and take the picture. Everything in the movie wasn't special effects, though. In fact, everything that you see in the movie was all made by hand from the characters, their clothes, the apartment to even the fog.

    The character voices were done spectacularly, especially the accent that Coraline used. Since Coraline was from the Michigan, Dakota Fanning did a wonderful job of giving her a Midwestern accent that sounded very believable and the other actors did very well also. They gave the movie a sense that you weren't just watching a movie but a real play-by-play depiction of this young girl's life.

    The movie overall was spectacular especially for seeming like such a young-hearted, childish movie. I did think that the movie might have deserved a PG-13 rating for some violence and more suggestive clothing options of the characters so I definitely would recommend watching the movie before letting a child under the age of ten or so seeing it. On the other hand, I would also highly recommend that every person should see this movie because it has now become one of my all time favorites.