Everyone has a movie or two that they so desperately want to love, maybe the movie has a lot of good qualities about it, maybe it has a plot or character type that you really like, maybe it is based on one of your all-time favourite source materials, or maybe it's all three, but for one reason or another, you just don't like it, maybe the good things don't outweigh the bad, or maybe it is just different enough from a book you love so much that you can't help but notice every single detail they changed.
This is going to be a different kind of review.
Coraline was a book originally published in 2002, I didn't read it as a kid, I was like, four years old when it was released, I first read it when I was in middle school. At that time the movie was already out, and I did see that before reading the book. After some time though, the book became one of my favourites, in fact, it is in my top three, along side S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders and L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Both of which also had movies made from them. I really enjoyed the book for its themes, amazingly detailed settings, and for Coraline herself, who is a great protagonist and one of my examples of a strong female character.
Which is the main reason I don't like Coraline, the movie tossed most of her wit and cleverness to the cutting room floor. What made Coraline a strong character was that, even though she was afraid, she kept herself calm and at the end used her wit to defeat the Other Mother's disembodied hand. What she did was, she took an old cloth, placed it over the open well, placed her dolls and some plastic tea cups around, filling the cups with water as a weight, and placed the key in the center, pretending to have a tea party with her dolls. When the hand made a grab for the key, it's weight sent it, the key and the cloth plummeting down the well, which Coraline sealed back up.
I guess in the end, smashing the hand would have made it more clear that the hand was done, but the well was stated to be so deep you could see stars in the sky in the middle of the day, and even then the boards covering the well were at least sturdy enough to carry the weight of a child so, they are probably not easy to move. I get that most of this in inferring, but at the same time, it is pretty much a given that the hand is gone, as is the key. However, my main point is, smashing it with a large rock only served to ruin what was a clever plan from a clever main character.
Speaking of clever. You know how Coraline found out about the snow-globe in the book? She realized that the Other Mother could not create, only distort. Yeah, the snow-globes on the mantle were not in the book, it was only one Snow-Globe. It was inconspicuous enough to be unnoticed by Coraline in the first place, I don't get why they needed it to be a collection her actual mother and father already had, and making it so that it she noticed her parents in it rather than figure it out, again serves to make her less clever.
There are some small changes I don't get, like, why did they make the door a crawl-space door. If it was meant to be so, I think Neil Gaiman would have written it in. Keep in mind, it was speculated in the book to have originally lead to the other flat of the house, but at the same time, it doesn't really effect anything major.
I also don't get why they changed the stone to a piece of candy. Stones with a natural hole in them, or Hag Stones as they're called, have some significance in magic, as they were used to ward off curses and nightmares, see other worlds and even reveal the true appearance of something. Is this another Philosopher's Stone thing where they thought people wouldn't understand it and changed it to something that has no significance to anything other than making it more marketable?
Unlike Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, this makes even less sense as even though I did not understand the connection, I could still grasp the idea of a stone with a natural hole in the center being used to reveal things.
I must also ask why they felt the need to destroy the "Hag Candy" in the film. I guess it makes things more suspenseful, but at the same time, the stone could not really help her in finding her parents anyway, since she was being watched by the Other Mother. Even if they wanted to go down the route of having her destroy the stone, wouldn't crushing it in her fist be more haunting than tossing it into a fire?
But my most hated change in the film is the addition of Wyborn. He is not only an irritating character, he is also an unnecessary one. Everything he did in the film was either a change from the book or an addition to the book (I.e. the doll he gives Coraline). For an example, he didn't release Coraline from her punishment in the book. It was the Other Mother, who got her from behind the mirror when she felt that Coraline learned her lesson. This made her more human in the book, which can make her more unnerving, especially since this is when we learn Coraline isn't the first child to stumble through the door.
To be absolutely fair to this movie, to be fair, it is a good quality movie, it has wonderful animation and settings, has a pretty good version of Coraline (if not as good as the book), does stand out on it's own, and was the introduction film for Laika Studios, which would eventually give us Kubo and the Two Strings, one of my personal favourites. By all means, this is a good movie, and worth checking out, but I can't get over some of the changes from the book to the screen, maybe if they made it so Coraline was still the intelligent character of the book, but personally, I did not care for this movie. I am going to side with the book for a long time to come.
However, as a film I do have to give it praise, so in the spirit of fairness, and the fact that it is a quality product, I do have to give it a recommendation rating. I can't go higher because of my feelings, but I will grant it a good rating.
I guess in the end, smashing the hand would have made it more clear that the hand was done, but the well was stated to be so deep you could see stars in the sky in the middle of the day, and even then the boards covering the well were at least sturdy enough to carry the weight of a child so, they are probably not easy to move. I get that most of this in inferring, but at the same time, it is pretty much a given that the hand is gone, as is the key. However, my main point is, smashing it with a large rock only served to ruin what was a clever plan from a clever main character.
Speaking of clever. You know how Coraline found out about the snow-globe in the book? She realized that the Other Mother could not create, only distort. Yeah, the snow-globes on the mantle were not in the book, it was only one Snow-Globe. It was inconspicuous enough to be unnoticed by Coraline in the first place, I don't get why they needed it to be a collection her actual mother and father already had, and making it so that it she noticed her parents in it rather than figure it out, again serves to make her less clever.
There are some small changes I don't get, like, why did they make the door a crawl-space door. If it was meant to be so, I think Neil Gaiman would have written it in. Keep in mind, it was speculated in the book to have originally lead to the other flat of the house, but at the same time, it doesn't really effect anything major.
I also don't get why they changed the stone to a piece of candy. Stones with a natural hole in them, or Hag Stones as they're called, have some significance in magic, as they were used to ward off curses and nightmares, see other worlds and even reveal the true appearance of something. Is this another Philosopher's Stone thing where they thought people wouldn't understand it and changed it to something that has no significance to anything other than making it more marketable?
Unlike Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, this makes even less sense as even though I did not understand the connection, I could still grasp the idea of a stone with a natural hole in the center being used to reveal things.
I must also ask why they felt the need to destroy the "Hag Candy" in the film. I guess it makes things more suspenseful, but at the same time, the stone could not really help her in finding her parents anyway, since she was being watched by the Other Mother. Even if they wanted to go down the route of having her destroy the stone, wouldn't crushing it in her fist be more haunting than tossing it into a fire?
But my most hated change in the film is the addition of Wyborn. He is not only an irritating character, he is also an unnecessary one. Everything he did in the film was either a change from the book or an addition to the book (I.e. the doll he gives Coraline). For an example, he didn't release Coraline from her punishment in the book. It was the Other Mother, who got her from behind the mirror when she felt that Coraline learned her lesson. This made her more human in the book, which can make her more unnerving, especially since this is when we learn Coraline isn't the first child to stumble through the door.
To be absolutely fair to this movie, to be fair, it is a good quality movie, it has wonderful animation and settings, has a pretty good version of Coraline (if not as good as the book), does stand out on it's own, and was the introduction film for Laika Studios, which would eventually give us Kubo and the Two Strings, one of my personal favourites. By all means, this is a good movie, and worth checking out, but I can't get over some of the changes from the book to the screen, maybe if they made it so Coraline was still the intelligent character of the book, but personally, I did not care for this movie. I am going to side with the book for a long time to come.
However, as a film I do have to give it praise, so in the spirit of fairness, and the fact that it is a quality product, I do have to give it a recommendation rating. I can't go higher because of my feelings, but I will grant it a good rating.
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