Movie Log: Coraline

There's a special Tuesday-night deal around where I live, and the whole Hornswoggler family took advantage of it to see Coraline, which I'd secretly been desperate to see, and which my older son asked about over the weekend. This is now only the second movie the boys have seen in a theater at night-time.

(This was the night before I flew out to AUTM, which made it a hectic day -- lots of meetings and getting-stuff-done at work, then coming home and running out to the movie, then packing. And that's my excuse for waiting four days to write about it.)

I'm not sure why, but Coraline didn't involve me as I hoped it would. Perhaps I was too impressed with the 3D effects and the amazing look of the figures and backgrounds; perhaps I was trying to remember the book and wondering if my sons would find it too scary. But I spent most of the film watching it in what I think of as "editor mode" -- examining each of the bits dispassionately, walking around all sides and kicking the tires. That hardly ever happens with movies in theaters; I get emotionally invested even in trite bits of fluff like Hotel for Dogs. But I didn't with Coraline; I was just watching it, and thinking about it, for most of the length of the movie.

It did make me want to re-read the novel, which I might do soon. And, in its 3D form, it's an absolutely stunning, gorgeous movie. (If you have even the slightest interest in it, go within the next week and see it in 3D. The new process is almost completely inobtrusive, and Coraline makes great use of it.)

I enjoyed Coraline, but it didn't grab me the way I wanted it to. And I'm still not sure why. It's a fine movie, and an amazing achievement. This is quite likely my problem, not the movie's.

(If you want to know the story of the movie, Gary Westfahl has a decent but overly demanding review for Locus, and Roger Ebert has an interesting ambivalent take on the movie as well.)