It’s no scarier than The Wizard of OZ or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or some of the original Disney movies. I’m taking my 9-year-old to it. My 3-year-old is still too hyper to take to a theater yet, but I’d let her watch it at home. I think it might be a little scary to little ones, but scary in a good way. It puts a little bit of adrenaline into the story, but the movie ultmately isn’t going to let anybody get hurt.
I loved the book. I loved the mood Neil Gaiman portrayed. I loved the “Britishness” of it. I’ve read it to my students for the past few years. The movie? Meh. I think I would have liked it better if I hadn’t read the book. As I watched the movie (yesterday, in 3-D) I kept wondering why they had to change the story so much.
Wow, tough room. I just saw this last night and thought it wonderful. Alternately charming, creepy, beautiful, and downright scary. I’m not sure what else one could want from an animated feature.
Well…The beldam gets badly hurt, more than once. Of course she’s the baddie, but there’s also all the “other” characters who die. You can say they don’t count because they’re the beldam’s creations, but other father and other Whybee are depicted as having real feelings and trying to help Coraline. Other Whybee is particularly heroic and pathetic.
ETA: Oh, and one the characters sings an original “They Might Be Giants” song!
Yeah, I thought it was much less creepy than advertised too. The fact that the movie has been described as “cute” in this thread makes me feel no rush to see if I like it better than the book.
Except for all the sewing.
My impression was that the movie lacked a real sense of urgency, and that the pace was rather meandering and leisurely. It leads you into this quiet “look around at all the wonders” mindset, and then slowly starts crawling with body horror . Frankly, I think that the situation with Other Father and Other Wybie is extremely unsettling–I absolutely hated the scene with Violet Beauregarde in the original Willy Wonka when I was a kid, for example, and this was worse.
Visually, though, it is awesome.
I laughed out loud at an in-joke from Anansi Boys.
The School Uniform was having a Presidents’ Day sale.
My daughter (9) and her friend enjoyed it, though she missed all the things that had been changed from the book. There’s no pleasing some people…
We just saw it today – very well done, and the changes made to the book seemed to improve it (based upon what MilliCal tells us – Pepper Mill and I haven’t read the book, although I’ve sneaked a look at it.)
If this is realy the inspiration, it’s only in a very general way. The plot , characters, and stresses are completely different.
Well, I don’t have any kids myself, so it’s a little hard for me to say, personally—I could only guess based on my experience as a 5 year old, and I was a weird kid. 
I think I could’ve handled it back then, though. It’s somewhat less spooky and a hell of a lot happier than Unico in the Island of Magic (the one with the puppets), which they used to run on the Disney Channel* when I was that age, and I was always game for watching that.
It’d depend on the kid in the end, I suppose. But I’m not an advocate of shielding children from anything remotely scary or serious…and Coraline isn’t exactly “Cannibal Holocaust” to begin with. Personally, I’d risk it. The 3-D element alone is worth the experience, anyway, and you can always leave if the 5 year old starts outright vomiting in terror, or something. 
*Off the top of my head, I can remember the Disney Channel running Return to Oz; Unico; both Rankin-Bass Tolkien movies (complete with blood, goblins, and gouging); that Care Bears movie that had the Satan kid…I think they had The Dark Crystal at some point…whats the toughest stuff they’ll run now? “Hannah Montana”? I mean, seriously…
The answer to that is that when they bought the movie rights the book wasn’t finished. They started the script from a first draft.
Double thank you for that.
Triple even.
We went and saw it last night and enjoyed it very much, though I don’t think I’ll take my kids. They’re easily creeped out (would you believe Chicken Run freaked out my oldest a year or so ago? I can’t even figure out how, but one part gave her bad dreams…). I think I’ll have the 8yo read the book instead–she seems to be able to take a lot more in print. She just read the entire LOTR trilogy, so surely she can read Coraline, which freaked me right out a few years ago.
Did anyone else really like the music? Were they singing in a made-up language, or was it a real one? I loved the songs with the words I couldn’t understand.
I found the movie very creepy, with all the sewing and spiders and freaky buttons.
I liked the movie - but did anyone else think that Gaiman may have ripped off Clive Barker’s “The Thief of Always” more than a little? http://www.amazon.com/Thief-Always-Clive-Barker/dp/0064409945
(Yes, Clive Barker can write for children - I was as surprised as anyone. He’s good, too!)
Just came back from watching it in 3-D. I like it a lot. I think the 3-D was well done and not distracting and added to the telling of the story. It’s been sold out solid for the last two days at my local theater. It was made in Portland so it was fun to see most of the theater sit through the credits. The kids next to me were waiting to see their Uncle’s name and were excited when they saw it.
Saw it tonight and thought it was visually beautiful (visually incredible) but the story left me kind of baffled and put off. Kind of like my reaction when I saw “Spirited Away.” The characters and their interactions just seemed disjointed too much of the time. For example…
Why did the Other Mother agree to make it so easy for Coraline to beat her in the game? She actually agreed to give her hints about where to find the ghost kids’ eyes…? And then she reacted calmly to the world disintegrating around her after Coraline found the eyes? Why wasn’t Coraline more afraid of the Other Mother? Why, for that matter, was Coraline so unpleasant (it’s not just me: Roger Ebert makes a point of it in his review). What was up with the Other Father? At first he seemed in cahoots with Other Mother, but then…not? She was really controlling him, too? What, really, was Other Mother’s motivation to get Coraline? Did she really want to love her, or did she want to “eat” her? What was the point of the two old actresses? Just local color? Etc. etc. etc.
I dunno. I was disappointed. Maybe all those questions would be more clear if I’d read the book, but for a “Coraline” newbie, it was a bit of a let-down. (Though, again, visually stunning – worth seeing at least for that.)
Hell yes…gorgeous. I’m probably going to get the soundtrack, soonish.
And according to the credits, the singing was performed by a French choir, and the iTunes samples sound like French—I caught a couple of words, like “fille.”
Something I noticed about the 3D effects in the film is that they seemed to compose the shots to emphasize depth into the screen rather than make things emerge from it. I thought that was an interesting approach to the technology.
Why did the Other Mother agree to make it so easy for Coraline to beat her in the game? She actually agreed to give her hints about where to find the ghost kids’ eyes…? And then she reacted calmly to the world disintegrating around her after Coraline found the eyes?Without a hint, it wouldn’t have been much of a game. Even with it, Coraline needed the magic stone the sisters had given her, which the other mother didn’t know about. The other mother also wouldn’t have counted on the other father giving up the first eye.Why wasn’t Coraline more afraid of the Other Mother?She seemed afraid enough when she realized what she was dealing with, but she had to go forward for the same reasons Dorothy went face to face with a wizard and a witch instead of giving up: it wouldn’t have been much of a story and she wouldn’t have been much of a hero if she didn’t.
I thought Ebert gave a good answer for that himself: “It would be cruelty to send Pippi Longstocking down that tunnel, but Coraline deserves it. Maybe she’ll learn a lesson.” Although I’d like to add I didn’t think Coraline was so terrible, given that she had just been uprooted and her parents, although not *bad *parents, were not the warmest and most loving.What was up with the Other Father? At first he seemed in cahoots with Other Mother, but then…not? She was really controlling him, too?He says as much.What, really, was Other Mother’s motivation to get Coraline? Did she really want to love her, or did she want to “eat” her?Maybe both. I don’t think she has a healthy idea of what love is.What was the point of the two old actresses? Just local color?Well, they definitely did that, but they also gave the hero an ominous but ambiguous warning early in the story and a tool that was vital to complete her quest in the later part.
In addition: When the cat encourages Coraline to challenge the other mother, he says that she loves games but won’t “play fair”. Whether or not Coraline won the game, the other mother never intended to let her go. (Clearly; it wasn’t as they shook hands and went their separate ways after the real parents were found.)
Holy Fuck - that looks AWESOME!
I thought it was great. As mentioned before, the 3D was used more for depth than having objects fly off the screen. I’m not sure I’ve seent that before.
The theater we went to had signs up warning parents about the creepy content. Apparently people assume all animations are for little kids. I don’t think most kids would be bothered by it, they might actually get bored.