Coraline

Tonight during open dorms we watched the Tim Burton film, Coraline. This movie, while owning some very dark features, was actually extremely well written and played out.

Up until now, I'd never seen the full movie, just clips and things on YouTube, along with some special features. One I find interesting is that when creating this movie, a woman was commissioned to knit all of Coraline's sweaters with an extremely small pair of knitting needles, just to make them look more real.

The story of Coraline starts with she and her parents moving into the Pink Palace Appartments building. When her dad tells her to go explore the house, she finds a small door in the wall, covered up by wallpaper. When the door is opened, at first it just looks like nothing, because behind the door was just a wall of bricks. But later, the door changes to become something of a portal to another world. She goes through to find her other mother, other father, other neighbors, and more than she could ever hope for in the perfect world. Everything is made just for her to make her happy.

The problem with this world though, is that it's all a trap. Her other mother is seemingly nothing more than a spider who spun her web so cleverly into a world that she thought would impress Coraline and make her want to stay with her forever. As soon as Coraline figures this out, the movie changes into a race to save her parents and those others that the other mother had trapped in her world. And as Coraline goes further in her battle and fights more, the world, the web, begins to unravel.

I won't spoil specifics on the ending, but if you want to find out, you can rent this movie from Becker on the third floor.

What I found most interesting about this movie though, was the fact that it's supposed to be a children's film. And while the style, colors, and characters are mostly very whimsical and odd, there is a certain essence of darkness and cruelty that even I wouldn't show my children until a certain age. I mean, some stuff in that movie truly scared me, so how could this possibly scar a child?

I respect Tim burton and his style, I just want to keep in my personal context that I see some of his films as ver good for kids, and some to be better suited for a slightly older audience.