The movie is based on the story of the same name written by Neil Gaiman. It is the tale of a little girl who moves into a new home with her parents. Her parents don’t pay her much attention as they are workaholics who work from home. She discovers that her new home is the entrance to a different world where her ‘Other’ parents dote her with non-stop attention. She later realizes that things aren’t always what they seem.
If you have read the book, don’t worry the movie is different enough to be entertaining, but not so much that it is a completely different story.

What makes the movie spectacular is how its made. Stop-motion animation (according to Wikipedia) is ‘an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own’ (think of Rudolf, the Red Nose Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman). So the entire movie (characters, set and all) is made up of miniatures that are moved one bit at a time to make the movie. This means that one simple scene usually takes weeks to shoot because in order to get one second of the movie done, the animators must move and take pictures of the scene 24 times. The movie has an added complexity because it was also shot in 3-D. In order for them to do this, they had to build special hardware to hold the cameras in place.

If you purchase the DVD, I would highly recommend that you watch ‘the Making of Coraline’ feature after the movie. This feature will give you an appreciation of the movie, and when you watch it again (as I know you will) you will see how fantastic it really is. Especially when you learn that nothing was computer generated.

I have seen many stop-motion movies in my day, but I have to say that Coraline is the best I have seen to date. I would highly recommend it to all.

I liked the characters as they were portrayed particularly because they were almost identically like the book. I also liked that the magic was not the focal point of the story, just like in the book. The final battle scene was a bit of a let down for me, I pictured it more dramatic but I do have to say that Mr. Chris Columbus did work very hard to ensure the movie did not stray from the book. The one thing that I wished they had done was selected younger actors to play the characters. I can’t see how those involved did not think that the other books would not be made into film. If they would have chosen actors that were three to four years younger they would be able to grow with the movies and look the part better.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by Chris Columbus was a very good adaptation of the book and I must commend Mr. Columbus for keeping his artistic license in check and translating the feeling of the book to his film without altering the story. I would highly recommend this movie.