The governing emotion, at the physical peculiarities match their than drawn images, is already a kind
beginning, is loneliness. A smart, brave quirks of character. Upstairs there is a of three-dimensional animation. The
girl named Coraline Jones, voiced by Russian circus artist with the rasping glasses you put on are thus not a
Dakota Fanning, has recently moved voice of Ian McShane, while below a gimmick but an aid to seeing what’s
from Michigan to an apartment in a pair of aging burlesque performers already there.
big pink Victorian house somewhere twitter and chirp in the giddy tones of And what is there, on the screen,
in Oregon. She is at an age when Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, is almost too much to absorb in one
the inadequacy of her parents starts queens of British TV comedy. sitting: costumed mice and Scottish
to become apparent, and Coraline’s A secret door in the wall, which terriers; glowing blossoms and giant
stressed-out, self-absorbed mom and opens only at night, leads Coraline insects. The “other” world Coraline
dad (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman), to a parallel world that at first seems explores is fascinating, but also
who write about gardening, barely to fulfill her sad heart’s every desire. unsettling. Everyone there has buttons
look up from their computer screens The versions of her parents who live for eyes, like homemade dolls, and if
when she’s in the room. And so, like there — a queen-bee “other mother” she wants to stick around, Coraline will
many a children’s book heroine before and her agreeable mate — are warm have to become like them.
her, Coraline sets out to explore her and attentive, and the pink house is This simple, horrifying operation
curious surroundings, interweaving a wild wonderland where gardens — foreshadowed in the haunting
the odd details of everyday reality with bloom in moonlight and every visit opening title sequence — unlocks a
the bright threads of imagination. She discloses new amusements. The cellarful of psychological implications.
is accompanied from time to time by oddball neighbors are there, in It would be too simple to say that the
a local boy (Robert Bailey Jr.) and a altered form, to enthrall Coraline door in the wall leads directly to the
talking cat (Keith David). with nightly spectacles — a dream unconscious. Mr. Selick is hardly a
Like the best fantasy writers Mr. vaudeville that will transfix the doctrinaire Freudian, but he does grasp
Gaiman does not draw too firm a movie’s audience as well. the intimate connection between fairy
boundary between the actual and The 3-D aspects of “Coraline” are tales and the murky, occult power
the magical, allowing the two realms unusually subtle. Now and then stuff of longing, existential confusion and
to shadow and influence each other. is flung off the screen into your face, misplaced desire. “Coraline” explores
Mr. Selick, for his part, is so wantonly but the point is not to make you duck the predatory implications of parental
inventive and so psychologically or shriek. Instead Mr. Selick uses the love — that other mother is a monster
astute that even Coraline’s dull technology to make his world deeper of misplaced maternal instinct — but
domestic reality is tinted with and more intriguing. And of course is grounded in the pluck and common
enchantment. Her neighbors are the stop-motion technique he uses, sense of its heroine, who is resilient,
a collection of eccentrics whose based on sculptured figures rather ingenious and magically real. n
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