Coraline Jones, the film's feisty heroine (expertly voiced by Dakota Fanning), is introduced with a crisis on her hands. She and her unnamed parents ( Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) have moved from Michigan to dark and rainy Ashland, Ore., taking up rooms in a large Victorian called the Pink Palace, where Coraline is bored, bored, bored.
That's in large part because her parents are oblivious to her existence and given to saying things like "I'm really, really busy" whenever she tries to get their attention. Even the appearance of a local boy named Wybie ( Robert Bailey Jr.) doesn't help.
So Coraline is more than delighted when she discovers a hidden door in the house that opens onto a rabbit hole that leads down to a parallel world. There she meets her Other Mother and her Other Father, the attentive, devoted parents she's always wanted. They look and sound like her real parents, with one unsettling exception: Their active eyes have been replaced by large black buttons.
Everything in this other world is livelier and more exotic than the one upstairs. Even Coraline's neighbors, the furtive acrobat known as the Amazing Bobinsky ( Ian McShane) and the retired actresses called Miss Spink and Miss Forcible (the British comedy team of Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French) are much wilder and crazier down here than in the real world.
It's in this thrilling other world that the combination of stop-motion and 3-D really comes into its own. A jumping mouse circus has 61 mice on-screen (and took 66 days to animate), and an entire audience of Scottie dogs, 248 strong, watches a theatrical performance. It's impossible not to be impressed.
The more wonderful this world becomes, the more the Other Mother pressures Coraline to stay forever, to trade in her eyes for buttons. It becomes harder and harder for the girl to return to her real home, and the entire experience turns slowly but inexorably into the kind of nightmare you can't wake up from no matter how hard you try.
Advised by a self-possessed talking cat ( Keith David), Coraline has to realize what is important in life and fight to keep herself and her family alive. Source: LA Times



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My sister wants to see this movie. I don't know if I'll see it or not. It probably depends if there's anyone who wants to go with me.






