Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #141 in DVD
• Released on: 2009-10-12
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 97 minutes

DVD Description
Based on Neil Gaiman’s international best-selling book and helmed by The Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick. In the film, a young girl (voiced by Dakota Fanning) walks through a secret door in her new home and discovers an alternate version of her life. On the surface, this parallel reality is eerily similar to her real life--only much better. But when this wondrously off-kilter, fantastical adventure turns dangerous, and her counterfeit other mother (voiced by Teri Hatcher) tries to keep her forever, Coraline must count on her stubborn determination, bravery, the aid of her neighbours and a talking black cat to save her real parents and some ghost children and to get back home.

Special Features
- 2D Feature Commentary
- Deleted Scenes
- The Making Of Coraline

Synopsis
As covetous children are often warned: 'Be careful what you wish for'. It's this very cautionary wisdom that sets the stage for Henry Selick’s CORALINE, an eerily eye-popping stop-motion animation tale of fractured dreams and families made whole. As the films opens, Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) and her parents (Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman) have moved into the Pink Palace, a once-vibrant boarding house that's turned drab and dilapidated. As her parents work feverishly on a new gardening catalog, the bored and belligerent Coraline is admonished to explore her new world's possibilities. Along the way she meets her fellow tenants, including two aging English showgirls and a mouse-training Russian acrobat, as well as an outcast neighbourhood boy named Wybie. But it is a mysterious hidden door that most piques Coraline's interest--a gateway to a parallel world where her 'other' parents and neighbours live only to see Coraline well fed and endlessly entertained. All is not cakes and carnivals for Coraline, though, and the black buttons that have replaced the eyes of these otherworldly imitations hint at darker intentions. When these intentions are revealed, Cora and a friendly magical cat use their wits and willpower to defeat Coraline's wicked 'other mother' and restore balance in the real world.
Based on Neil Gaiman’s beloved children’s novel, director Selick (THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS) uses the stop-motion technique to bring CORALINE to life with amazing visual and emotional depth. The result is a frightfully magical adventure that will give the whole family plenty to shriek, cheer, and talk about.

Customer Reviews

Coraline
The Plot
After being ignored by her busy parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman), Coraline (Dakota Fanning) finds a doorway in her new home to a happier mirror world, where everything seems perfect. But all is not as it seems.

The Review
With Coraline, Nightmare Before Christmas helmer Henry Selick, immerses viewers in a Dahl-esque world of secret passage ways, talking cats and eccentric neighbours. Despite the pleasures Caroline experiences in the other world - most noticeably, parents who pay attention to her - everything is not as it seems, as Coraline will have to give up her eyes and have them replaced by buttons if she wants to remain in this new world.

Coraline has everything which a good children's film should have - thrills, spills and also some frights, as the belief that children don't like to be scare is a myth. The magical world she is transported to emerges into a tense game of hide and seek, with puzzles and riddles to be solved, all anchored by the smart young Coraline. However, it isn't completely edge of the seat stuff, as there is a distinct lack of peril.

The stop-motion `Other World' that Selick and his massive team have created is beautiful and vivid with great attention to detail, which contrasts with the grey and drizzly real world. The 3D is also stunning, immersing the viewer in Coraline's world. Again though, the 3D in Coraline felt unnecessary, as the story and stop-motion animation are strong enough on their own without the need for the 3D gimmick.

The Verdict
Positively chilling in places, Coraline transports you to a world full of adventure, making for an enthralling film.

Magical and extraordinary - one of the best animated films of 2009
Coraline is a PG rated fantasy horror film based on an award-winning novella of the same title by British writer Neil Gaiman. This review is of the standard two-dimensional version of the DVD. There are nine language options (English, Hungarian, Dutch, Arabic, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish) but the subtitles option is in English only.

Eleven-year-old Coraline Jones and her parents have just moved into a 150-year-old apartment. Her parents are always busy with their work and pay her little attention. Feeling isolated and rejected, she goes off to explore the old property that is her new home. She meets the neighbours - two elderly former actresses voiced by Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders and an even older man (Ian McShane) who trains mice - and finds a small papered-over door in the drawing room, although when Coraline removes the paper and opens the door she finds the entrance beyond is bricked up. The next day she uses a key to open the door and finds a long dark corridor leading to an apartment which appears to be a duplicate of her own. This alternate world is inhabited by her Other Mother and Other Father, who are near-replicas of her real parents, except they have buttons for eyes. At first her Other Parents seem more interesting, fun and caring than her real parents and after a while offer her a chance to stay in this world forever if Coraline will sew buttons over her eyes. Coraline decides she would rather go home, much to the disappointment of her Other Mother. Upon her return to her flat, Coraline finds her real parents are missing. They do not return by the next day, and Coraline, discovering they were kidnapped by her Other Mother, resolves to rescue them.

Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning), the young heroine and self proclaimed explorer, is young, clever, curious, resourceful, and brave. A black cat acts as her mentor and guides her through her journey. Unlike many of the characters, the cat does not have an "other world" counterpart. It moves freely from one world to the next, although it can talk in the Other Mother's world. It is very sarcastic towards Coraline and defiant of the Other Mother, but seems to tremble at the thought of being stuck in the Other Mother's world.

This is an exceptional achievement, being made almost entirely using 24 fps stop-motion technology - a technique that dates back to black-and-white movie classics such as the original King Kong [DVD] [1933], the Ray Harryhausen films such as Jason And The Argonauts [DVD] [1963], and most recently in the Wallace & Gromit comedies such as The Curse of the Were-Rabbit . By being stop-motion, and therefore utilising physical puppets as opposed to CGI technology, I would imagine that it would particularly benefit from the options of 3D and Blu-Ray, but even the ordinary 2D variant is stunning on its own. Some of the scenes that last just a few seconds on the screen (e,g. a burning fireplace) took three or four weeks to create, and the film as a whole took years to complete with the huge staff of animators and technicians producing about three seconds of film in a typical day. The extras on the DVD go into extensive detail about how the film was made, and in a way it is almost as fascinating as the film itself, albeit in a very different way of course.

Contrary to some other reviews I believe that this is suitable for primary-school age children and despite some slightly scary images and concepts I do not think it likely that any young children would have nightmares or suffer trauma of any kind. On the contrary, most children would be captivated, mesmerised and simply have their eyes glued to the screen and would want to see the film repeatedly - my own were! It's definitely a film worth buying rather than just renting! In fact I would say it's at the very least the best animated film of the year, and right up there with the best in our extensive Pixar/Disney collection. I plan to buy the Blu-Ray version, which promises even more visual trasures, although I am a little sceptical about the benefits of 3D in the home. We shall see.

Director Henry Selick is a renowned stop motion movie director, producer and writer with The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach among his past achievements. Coraline is just as good and probably his best yet.

Not a film for every child.
I took three 7 year olds to see this at the cinema....all three were terrified once the film took a darker turn and had nightmares after it.