Editorial: Why I don't like Coraline (2009)

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.

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) - Laika's crowning achievement of animation.

With the release of Missing Link not too long ago, I figured it was a good time to look at my current favourite of Laika's animated line-up. While I didn't get the chance to see Kubo and the Two Strings in theatres when it came out, I got the chance to see it on DVD and it was incredible, quickly becoming one of my favourite animated features. But what makes this movie so amazing?

The plot is simple, Kubo and his mother are hiding from Kubo's grandfather, the Moon King. One night, Kubo accidentally stays out past dark and gets attacked by his grandfather's other daughters. After his village gets destroyed, his mother sends him away and enchants a monkey charm to assist him. Most of the movie is the adventure that Kubo and the Monkey guardian have, and what kind of locations and creatures they come across. They get joined by a origami paper doll of Kubo's father, Hanzo, and a beetle like man who is missing his memory, and they must retrieve three pieces of armour to help Kubo in surviving against the Moon King. The movie moves along quite nicely plot wise utilizing the montage very well, and when it's necessary. The plot is cohesive and smooth and let me with no questions after viewing.

The main characters are entertaining to watch, Kubo is very much a child in this movie, emotional, sometimes rude, maybe a bit naive, Kubo is one of the best child characters in animation I've seen. The Monkey Guardian and the Beetle Samurai are entertaining in the way they bounce off of Kubo and each other, and there is a lot of warmth in the side characters. The main antagonists are also really good. Kubo's aunts are really creepy in the way they're designed and how they speak, and the Moon King is rather clever, and I like the design of the beast that he turns into in the end. The characters are entertaining and you do get to understand their reasons for doing the things they do, which makes them more relateable than randomly giving them a single trait or interest like a lot of other movies do.

One thing I don't think I could ever criticize Laika for is how amazing they make their animation look. Like, forgetting the fact that it looks so fluid, the backgrounds and colours of this movie are often amazing, even places like a rotting whale carcass and a burned down village look good. The animation itself, it's incredible, while you can tell a lot of it is stop-motion, it's all so smooth and stylish that you get sucked into it anyway. The one small bit that gets me is when Kubo sets the sail on the leaf-ship he makes. I dun't know, but something about that one tiny clip is just so incredible. I also like how they animated Kubo's hair and other small details that one wouldn't notice on first viewing, like how when Kubo and the Beetle Samurai ask the Monkey Guardian for her story, the paper Hanzo also puts his hands together to beg. Laika does another amazing job with their animation, but what else is new there.

Being a Laika production also means one thing, a twist of horror in the film. These moments are small however, and are mostly used to emphasize the danger of the situation. There is a lot of humour to balance out the slow character moments and bits of horror. Humour wise, a lot of the humour comes from the characters, and rather than having them make painful and unfunny jokes, the humour often fits with the characters themselves, I don't want to spoil a lot of the humour, but while the movie isn't laugh out loud funny, it has it's moments. The humour is mostly there to balance the more serious stuff in the movie, and it's never intrusive or distracting.

I really do think this is Laika's best film so far, the animation was beautiful and spectacular, the humour was welcomed, the characters were warm and engaging, the horror elements were executed perfectly, and the movie as a whole is one of the best animated movies ever made, in fact I'd even go so far as to say it's one of the best movies ever made period. If you haven't given this movie a chance for whatever reason, I can not recommend it enough, Kubo and the Two Strings is a fantastic film for kids and adults.

First Impressions: Missing Link (2019)

Laika returns with their latest in stop-motion animated spectaculars. This time, instead of having a horror element, this movie is a lot more comedic in tone, but is that this movie's downfall?

Laika is a studio that always seems to impress people. While I wasn't a big fan of Coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings is definitely one of my favourite animated films, so I know Laika has earned the reputation it has. Missing Link is an interesting addition to their list in that regard because Laika usually adds a horror element to their movies, however, this movie chooses to instead focus on beautiful colours, a sense of adventure and some comedic tones.

I think Missing Link was a movie that one would go in with moderate expectations being met. The trailers didn't make this movie out to be on the same level as Kubo, but I think they knew that while making this movie. Missing Link does not hit the same highs as Kubo, but that isn't a bad thing. This could help Laika in the long run as not simply being a one-trick pony, sure they're known for films like Coraline and ParaNorman, but the question remains, could they do anything else?

Missing Link really does stand out with it's animation. This movie not only as some amazing animation, as to be expected from Laika, honestly Laika does stop-motion so well it's hard to tell that it is stop-motion. However, the movie also makes amazing use of it's cinematography. The one shot that impressed me the most in this movie was when Mr. Link was looking at his reflections, multiple reflections. The scene with context is really great, but the animation work was astounding. I couldn't tell if each reflection was painted on, a separate model, a digital effect or actual reflections, though I'm not betting on that last one.

Being a more comedic movie that the rest of Laika's catalogue, the movie will most live or die based off it's jokes. While this movie does have some dud jokes, and they fall hard, a lot of this movie was decently funny. Never to the point where I was rolling out of my seat, but most of the humour was decent, and had me chuckling more than twice.

If you consider Laika to only make stop-motion movies with a horror touch, I think you're gonna be disappointed. However, if you go into this movie expecting a decently funny movie with beautiful animation, you're gonna get what you go in for. While this may not be the best movie in Laika's line-up, it's still worth seeing at least once. If only just to see the amazing visuals of this movie, but you'll also get some decent emotional scenes, some decent humour and some entertaining action scenes. All in all, it's worth seeing.

And those were my thoughts on Missing Link, see you next time at the odeon.