Dorkgasm Gonzo Is God

Behind The Small Door
 By
 Kenneth Holm
 Senior Staff Writer

            There are good movie adaptations of books, and there are bad movie adaptations. However, every once in a while, there are superb movie adaptations of books. While most literary adaptations leave the book as the superior, Coraline is the rare movie that not only brings the book to life properly, but also adds to the charm and story of the original.             Coraline is based on the... well, I guess it's a children's book, by Neil Gaiman. The story and movie focus on a young girl named Coraline Jones (voiced by the hardest working child actor in show business, Dakota Fanning) who moves to a ramshackle house in the woods called The Pink Palace. Her parents (played convincingly by Teri Hatcher of Desperate Housewives fame and John Hodgman, author and star of those charming Mac/PC commercials) are very busy writing a gardening catalog; so they send Coraline off on her own to discover the joys of their new triplex home. Along the way, she meets her new eccentric neighbors. Her lower neighbors, Miss Spink (Jennifer Saunders) and Miss Forcible (Dawn French) are former film actresses who starred in films such as “Julius Sees Her” and “King Leer”. They live with a veritable army of Scottish Terriers (both alive and dead) and remember their golden days while playing seer and reading tealeaves. Coraline's upstairs neighbor is Mr. Bobinsky, a reclusive eccentric/drunk. Bobinsky is training a mouse circus and occasionally receives packages of especially pungent cheese. Coraline even makes a brand new frenemy in movie-exclusive neighbor Wybie Lovat (Robert Bailey, Jr.) and his feral cat. Yes sir, everything is going just fine, except for the fact that no one listens to Coraline.             One day, Coraline finds a small door behind the wallpaper in her living room. After her mother finds the key, the door opens to reveal... a brick wall. Disappointed that her one chance at adventure has slipped through her fingers, she heads to bed. A noise wakes her in the evening, however. Coraline finds a mouse in her room and chases it downstairs into the living room, where it escapes into the small doorway. Coraline throws the door open, expecting to find the mouse sandwiched in between a rock and a hard place, but discovers an umbilical cord-like tunnel that leads to another small doorway. Once Coraline crosses the threshold, the real adventure begins. She finds herself in a world just likes her own, only better. Her Other Mother (also played by Hatcher) cooks like Julia Child and is always up for playtime games. Her Other Father (again voiced by Hodgman) does not write articles, but plays the piano and writes songs that sound suspiciously like They Might Be Giants. Best of all, her Other Parents listen to her! Yes, this new world is wonderful with one exception. See, it seems that everyone has buttons for eyes.

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            Along the way, Coraline meets the Other versions of her neighbors and their respective talents, including Mr. Bobinsky's Amazing Mouse Circus (which contains some of the best animation that I have ever seen) and the incredible transformation of Spink and Forcible, as well as a much more tolerable (i.e., silent) version of Wybie. Coraline begins to feel that something is wrong when Wybie's cat (voiced by dork icon Keith David) starts to talk about how dangerous things are in this brave new world. Coraline must then choose between her new exciting life and her old boring one, but that choice is not as easy as one might think. The movie ramps up into an exciting climax that will thrill everyone, young and old.             Now that you know about it, let me tell you what I thought about this movie. I am a huge fan of the book. Hell, I could read a Neil Gaiman version of the Yellow Pages and probably find it magical and mesmerizing. Overall, I found the book to be more disturbing than the movie, but I can easily recommend the movie to fans both new and old. The actors have done a marvelous job of fleshing out what I thought would have been a slightly uneven story, and the animation is the most amazing work of stop-motion that has ever graced the screen. Yeah, it is even better than The Nightmare Before Christmas. Seriously. The real star of this movie is Henry Selick, though. Selick has been through the stop-motion wringer, turning in superior efforts (the aforementioned Nightmare and James and the Giant Peach) and iffy efforts (live action / stop-motion hybrid Monkeybone), and he has shown improvement with every movie. However, the direction of this movie, as well as the script that he wrote, has elevated Selick onto a new level of animation mastery. I hope that Coraline will open more doors for Selick so he can continue to make fans of all ages smile.             Why are you still reading this? Go on! Go see Coraline now! Even better, go see it in 3-D. Coraline is one of those wonderfully animated features that are playing in 3-D in select theaters. Now, if you do go to see this in the third dimension, don't expect any goofy gimmicks or things flying at your face. This film uses the third dimension in a more subtle fashion. Coraline has some eye-popping tricks, but they mostly give the images depth, which just makes everything look so much better. I had the pleasure of seeing this in 3-D, and it was the first movie I have seen with 3-D glasses in a theatrical setting. I was pleasantly surprised and even awestruck at times. My children were even more so than I. Even my wife, who does not get into the movies that much, was spellbound by the amazing images on the screen. I tell you, dorks, it does not get much better than this. Final Verdict (out of 5):