Like the 3-D and the stop-motion technology it employs, writer/director Henry Selick’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline is something old that’s not particularly new or ground-breaking anymore—but is still very satisfying. It’s a fairy tale—y’know, the original kind, the kind meant for kids?—that forgoes the pretense of making its familiar format topically new simply for its own sake. Any deeper meaning to the film, like the lurking question of what exactly a parent owes to their children, is left fundamentally obscured by a blissful scarcity of deeper detail. Everything is left on the level of superficial storytelling that needs no justification save that it’s nice to be told a good yarn every now and then.As modest as its achievements are, Coraline deserves commendation for its mostly brisk pacing and economic parceling out of information. Selick, no slouch even on his worst day (see: Monkeybone—or better yet, don’t), hits the ground running and gives us just enough detail to keep the world of our titular heroine (the alternately grating and versatile Dakota Fanning) deeply inviting.
After being welcomed to her new country home by a mangy black cat, a Russian gymnast who trains jumping mice, two former burlesque stars that read tea leaves and a creepy but well-meaning young stalker, Coraline realizes she needs a little comfort from her family. She finds it on the other side of a tiny door that leads to an alternate universe where her family wants nothing but to see her smile. From there, her bright fantasy world, as we all by now should expect, becomes very Grimm very quick.
And yet, the fact that we know to expect certain characters will suffer and triumph at certain points is unimportant. Selick has made the best kind of pastiche, the kind of piecemeal story whose sole agenda is to tell what is by now a thrice-told tale very well. In Coraline’s first two-thirds, he gives us just enough to get hooked but never so much as to overstay his welcome. That’s one of Selick’s greatest assets: as a gifted animator and visual storyteller, his engrossingly detailed sets always wind up becoming his films’ most captivating characters.
For most of the film, Selick does everything right: the plot is dense with vibrant detail, fast-paced and most importantly, not the in the least bit condescending to its audience’s maturity or intelligence. It’s not for kids or adults but rather anyone interested in a fable that’s a story first and a fable second. Unlike the latter, whose purpose is to enforce an allegorical Meaning, Coraline eschews self-serving moralizing though there is a good moral to be taken away from its story of a girl in search of her dream family—selfishness in a parent-child relationship is a two-way street.
That breezy but intelligent level of storytelling craft is undoubtedly why the film’s third act is such a letdown. Though this is more than likely Gaiman’s fault just as much as it is Selick’s, the story’s preceding plot points are so neatly focused and effective in their rhythm that its meandering and frankly uninspired ending provides a very unwelcome surprise. Thankfully that perfunctory denouement doesn’t blemish the rest of the film, which is something of a small miracle and a long overdue return to prominence for Selick, who deserves Pixar-scale praise even if his latest doesn’t reinvent the wheel.
