Okay, I just watched it last week- I would've posted sooner, but I didn't feel up to devoting the time to saying all that I had to say until now, for some reason.
First of all, I'm just amazed by the sheer technicality of this movie. The huge amount of tiny little details, like Coraline's
hand-sewn gloves, and the incredibly smooth animation was such that I could easily call it- dare I say it?- the
Thief and the Cobbler of stop-motion. It's just that impressive.
In fact, after a while, I forgot that it was stop-motion and that I was watching it in 3-D and just
watched it. It's going to be extremely hard to top it. The story, of course, was appropriately surreal and creepy in that sort of childish way (which I like, because when you think about it, it's disturbing), and although I expected it to be more complex, I enjoyed it overall.
I was pleased to find out that the the Other Father's song was in fact performed by They Might Be Giants, who I like. I thought there was something reassuringly poppy about the singing in that one...
I found Wybie difficult to figure out... I figured he was generally the weird-kid-who-likes-skeletons type. I think that's a fairly common character in kid to preteen novels... of course I do know that he isn't from the original book, even though I haven't read it.
I was left curious as to the nature of the Other Father and the Other Wybie... it was obvious that they were victims and prisoners as well, so I just wonder what manner of creature they are...
Did anyone else the message at the end? It said: "For those in the know: JERK WAD!" How delightfully cryptic...
And at long last, do I sense some George Pal-esque techniques??
rats r teh evil.
