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I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again, there are some movies that just defy reviewing. These are movies that so completely suck you in – from the first frame – that all you can do is sit back, watch it unfold and enjoy the ride. That, in a nutshell, is Coraline. A brilliant movie for children of all ages that explores the fears and delights of childhood and what it truly means to belong.

The plot of Coraline is its most simplistic part. A young girl named Coraline has moved into an apartment in an old house with her present-but-absent workaholic parents. She’s been uprooted from her friends in her hometown and is trying to find her footing in this new place, with new people and no parental assistance. After a few scenes that lead us to believe that Coraline is borderline abused, but certainly unhappy, she finds a panel in the wall behind a box that has been papered over. Opening it Coraline discovers that it has been bricked over. That night she is awakened by a mouse with button eyes who leads her back to the panel, now with a tunnel to another place. There we meet The Other Mother, a version of Coraline’s mother that is exactly what she’s always dreamed of. As Coraline becomes more and more comfortable with this perfect world it becomes apparent that The Other Mother may not be all she pretends to be.

While Coraline is getting acquainted with her new home she meets a fantastic cast of characters from “Mr. B”, a crazy old man (voiced by an almost unrecognizable Ian McShane) who lives in the upstairs apartment and who is training mice to perform circus tricks to the crazy old burlesque performers Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, who live in the downstairs apartment with their gallery of taxidermied Scottie dogs, dreaming of another great show. The most interesting person she meets is a young boy named Wybie (which is short for ‘Wyborn’ which, while never completely spelled out, seems to have been shortened from ‘why were you born’) who hangs out with a cat (Keith David, voice of Spawn) and seems to have lots of information about the house Coraline lives in, but it’s all a little half-cooked. Each of these characters is hopelessly flawed and that eventually becomes the point. While with The Other Mother all of her new friends’ flaws and foibles are fixed, pasted over.

It is actually this particular dichotomy that makes the movie so interesting. Almost ‘anti-Disney’ in its construction Coraline discusses ‘you’re okay just the way you are’ in a way that most filmmakers generally consider to be too complex for today’s children. Director and screenwriter Henry Selick doesn’t turn away from this idea and never dumbs it down. Wybie is much less fun when he can’t talk, even though Coraline thinks this is pretty great in the beginning. Miss Spink and Miss Forcible are so over the top when actually performing that Coraline prefers the ‘performance’ that is their life. Mr. B succeeds at his attempts with the mice, but loses his eccentricity and charm. This is the type of discerning eye that we want making our children’s movies. This is the type of discerning eye I remember making the movies of my own childhood so filled with wonder. It is this that makes their memory last for me. This is something that Kung-Fu Panda, while a fun movie, simply can’t achieve on the same level. We need to stop pandering to our children, and not pandering is what this movie does so well.

I can’t finish off this review without discussing the remarkable achievement of the actual film itself. When Gaiman was almost finished writing Coraline he happened to see The Nightmare Before Christmas and was, obviously, blown away (as should everyone, actually). When he finally finished the manuscript he sent it to his agent and said ‘Please make sure this gets on Henry Selick’s desk’. It did and the rest, as they say, is history. Selick spent the last 7 years in the service of this brilliant little story and the product is remarkable. When Gaiman began his introduction of the movie last night he started by saying ‘Everything you see on the screen was made by a person. The only time computers were used was to remove lines in the same way that the lines in King Kong were hand painted out.’ Remember when you watch it that for the crew of almost 500 people, 40 seconds (SECONDS!) of usable screen time was a good day.

I strongly suggest that you see it in 3D, as they’ve used it the way I believe that 3D *should* be used – to enhance the movie, not to overshadow it – and the 3D brings it a life that it can’t get from a flat screen. Also, you only have three weeks to see it in 3D, before the Jonas Brothers movie comes in and boots the beautiful Coraline out of theatres. Stay until the end of the credits for a wee treat too. Here’s a link to 5 Coraline ‘Making Of’ shorts. Check them out, they’re amazing.

I sincerely hope that I have convinced you to see it – and soon! It’s really not to be missed. (Scroll down for some highlights of the Q&A with Gaiman…)