This is Henry Selick’s (Director of The Nightmare Before Christmas) latest stop motion animated film.  It’s beautiful.  Absolutely gorgeous.  My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed watching it from an aesthetic perspective.

The story goes that a young girl named Coraline is unhappy with her family who are too busy finishing a book to spend any time with her.  She finds a secret, locked door that leads to a magical world where her “other” parents live.  Her other parents have plenty of time to spend with her and have even planted a magical garden for her.  And it’s not just her parents that are magical.  Her neighbors are fantastical and just what any girl would want.

But all is not as it seems.  This is where things start to get scary as Coraline is first trapped in this other world and then has to rescue her parents and several ghost children who are trapped there also.

I would recommend this movie for children 11 and up.  I don’t think my kids would have enjoyed this movie.  First of all because it moves at a very slow pace and then because the other mom turns into a monster and there are ghost children that she has captured.  It’s kind of like an old fashioned fairy tale where when you do something wrong you have to pay the nasty, horrible consequences.  It’s not sugar coated.  Coraline is apparently based on a horror novella (by Neil Gaiman) and it shows.

On a side note, because of the reference to The Nightmare Before Christmas and it being a stop motion film I thought Tim Burton was involved so I’ve been telling people this is a Tim Burton film but as far as I can tell, it’s not.  Which is I guess why it’s scary and music is not such a big part of it.  I did see a preview for 9, Burton’s new movie coming out 9/9/09.  I’m really excited about that one.  It looks really good.  It doesn’t look anything like The Corpse Bride or Nightmare.  It’s like an action movie.

Anyway, back to my main topic, I loved it but what did you guys think of Coraline?