Coraline Review

Coraline (2008)

You rated this movie: 5.0 stars
Average of 12,266 ratings: 4.2 stars

Review from a Netflix user:

Spectacularly quirky and delightfully creepy, Coraline is like Alice in Wonderland meets Nightmare Before Christmas. Instead of falling down a rabbit hole, Coraline crawls into a tunnel located behind a locked doorway while exploring her new house, and discovers a kid's utopia version of her own life, where her workaholic parents have morphed into a fun-loving pair who cater to her every whim and desire. And she can stay in this world forever, if she will sew buttons over her eyes. Yup, this is where the creepy part comes in. The PG rating is VERY misleading b/c this is the stuff of nightmares for younger children. A PG-13 rating would have been more appropriate. Adult humor is not very subtle in some parts, such as a Burlesque show (complete with pasties) that her elderly neighbors, a flighty pair of retired dancers, perform. This was hilarious by the way, just not for children. I would recommend this more to children age 10 and up, and parents should probably pre-screen this one before showing it to them. As a grown-up, however, I adored this freak-fest of creepy/cool imagery and the refreshingly creative story. The stop-motion animation is incredible: the life-like movements of the cat, the raindrops on the windshield, the colorful, whimsical garden complete with a grasshopper-mobile her inventive dad rides around in.