Show D 3 Coraline lacks human dimension Desson Thomson Special to The Washington Post PostAs PostAs PostAs As we consume ever evermore evermore evermore more sophisticated forms of animation its it's easy to lose sight of the emotional connections we seek under all the technological fandango We admire WALL E for the way it evokes the epic science-fiction science worlds of an Alien or 2001 A Space Odyssey but were we're really moved by the title robots robot's romance with a hot metallic number named Eve What would Toy Story be without the clash of personalities between warmhearted Woody and brassy Buzz Do we love Finding Nemo for the generated computer-generated fish or a parents parent's desperate journey to find a lost child Watching Coraline a darkly delineated childrens children's tale tale in 3 D its it's easy to admire its imaginative fusion of low tech and high Its like doll-like characters some with buttons for eyes seem like the inspired creations of a on hands-on craft project And its staccato stop motion hails from an era that never knew the digital age But with stereoscopic 3 D high definition and computer- computer generated effects added to the equation the movie becomes supercharged with your in-your-face palpability A caveat You'll have to find a theater showing the J 4 movie in D 3 for the full experience most theaters around the country will show Coraline in the D 2 format formal We feel as if we could reach out and caress those characters' characters smoothly rounded faces or tweak the lacquered strands of their shiny hair The problem is we just dont don't want to hug them Coraline adapted from Neil Gaiman's Caimans enormously successful book follows an year 11 old girl voiced by Dakota Fanning whose petulant wish to replace emotionally unresponsive adults leads to toa toa toa a nightmarish experience ina in ina a parallel universe Pushing through a secret door to her new home she finds herself in another world where charming channing replicas of her parents they're the ones with button eyes invite her to live with them Theres There's a major hitch of course Coraline's Coralin s 's Other Mother voiced by Teri Ten Hatcher makes her hera a prisoner and demands unyielding devotion Its It's easy to see the stylistic fingerprints of writer-director writer Henry Selick who imbued The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach with such bleak whimsy Coraline resounds with similarly macabre inventiveness My favorite moment an opera hall filled with seated Scotty p dogs barking their appreciation for forthe forthe forthe the eccentric Miss Spink and Miss Forcible as the women perform a surreal combination of operetta and trapeze artistry onstage And I wont won't soon forget the uber-chilliness uber of Other Mother who suggests a Desperate Housewives spin on Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest For all its visually rewarding delights however Coraline remains i iL L l' l II I Gr k an engaging spectacle more than a connective drama W We enjoy the surface design but were we're never so caught up in the story that we lose our awareness of f it Form Fonn and content never blur We can put that down chiefly to the writing Selick doesn't reach for forthe forthe forthe the kind of universality that would deepen the movie Other Mother for instance never excoriates Coraline for wishing herself into her unwanted situation reminding the audience disconcertingly that we all have our secret untold desires that we occasionally wish even our dearest ones away that the most dangerous prayers are the ones God answers Its It's I I a shame because Fannings Fanning's performance as Coraline is the movies movie's most emotionally persuasive element Her assured modulations from cheeky to sweet from bored to anguished should have been part of a bigger deeper movie Unfortunately the screenplay is one humanistic rewrite away from realizing that Animations Animation's great purpose isn't merely to build more sophisticated superhighways to imagined worlds Its It's to show us new footpaths to the human heart Co raline rated PG and contains scary images some mild profanity and suggestive humor 1 |