Coraline [Blu-ray]

Overview

A young girl walks through a secret door and discovers a parallel reality that is eerily similar to the life she already knows, yet deeply unsettling in a number of ways, in director Henry Selick's animated adaptation of Neil Gaiman's international best-seller. Eleven-year-old Coraline Jones (voice of Dakota Fanning) is fearlessly courageous, and perhaps far too adventurous for her own good. Coraline and her parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) have recently relocated to Oregon from Michigan. Bored in her new home since her parents are distracted by work and she has yet to make any new friends, Coraline passes the time by exploring her new neighborhood with an annoying local boy named Wybie Lovat (Robert Bailey Jr.). But after paying a visit to her eccentric neighbors Miss Spink (Jennifer Saunders) and Miss Forcible (Dawn French), a pair of aging British actresses, and crossing paths with the outright weird Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane), the precocious young girl becomes convinced that her new surroundings are just as dull as she'd initially suspected. Shortly thereafter, Coraline discovers a hidden door in her new house, and decides to investigate. Venturing into the eerie passageway inside, Coraline emerges into an alternate version of her own reality. At first glance, this strange new world seems even better than the real thing; there her parents aren't distracted by work, and Coraline is always the center of attention. There's even a mysterious Cat (Keith David) that's fascinated by her every move. But when Coraline's button-eyed Other Mother (also Hatcher) attempts to make her stay permanent, the frightened young girl must summon her resourcefulness and bravery in order to find her way back home and save her real family.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/31/2021
UPC:	0826663218039
Original Release:	2009
Rating:	PG
Source:	Shout Factory
Language:	English
Time:	1:40:00
Sales rank:	12,014

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Dakota Fanning	Coraline Jones
Dawn French	Miss Forcible
Ian McShane	Mr. Bobinsky
Jennifer Saunders	Miss Spink
Keith David	Cat
Teri Hatcher	Mother
Robert Bailey Jr.	Wybie Lovat
John Hodgman	Father
Ian Somerhalder	Actor
Ian	Actor
Luisa Wietzorek	Voices
Bettina Weiß	Voices
Isabella Grothe	Voices
Katja Nottke	Voices
Reiner Schöne	Voices
Patrick Winczewski	Voices
Hannes Maurer	Voices
Hannah Kaiser	Actor
Marina Budovsky	Photo Friend
Emerson Tenney	Actor
Jeremy Ryder	Actor
Carolyn Crawford	Actor
John Linnell	Actor
Aankha Neal	Sweet Ghost Girl
George Selick	Ghost Boy,Photo Friend
Hannah Kaiser	Tall Ghost Girl
Emerson Hatcher	Magic Dragonfly
Jerome Ranft	Mover
Christopher Murrie	Toy
Jeremy Ryder	Toy
Bruno Coulais	Composer
Carolyn Crawford	Wybie's Grandmother
Yona Prost	Shakespeare Rascal

Technical Credits

Henry Selick

Henry Selick	Director,Screenwriter,Producer
Mary Sandell	Producer
Bill Mechanic	Producer
Claire Jennings	Producer
Benjamin William Adams	Special Effects
Marco Alicea	Sound Effects
Michael Zoumas	Executive Producer
Randy Thom	Sound/Sound Designer
Pete Kozachik	Director

Editorial Reviews

Coraline begins with its heroine in a sorry predicament. Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) is new in town, and with the exception of her immediate family, everyone refers to her incorrectly as Caroline. However, as frustrating as that may be, she's long since resigned herself to living in a world that perpetually mispronounces her name. The real problem is that Coraline has explored virtually every inch of her new house and its surrounding property (her findings include a boarded-up well rumored to be bottomless, or at least really deep, and a stray black cat too smart for its own good), and she's now excruciatingly, mind-numbingly bored. Her life is safe but unexciting; her parents are kind but unavailable; and the closest thing she has to friends are her neighbors (two washed-up actresses and the would-be ringmaster of a circus staffed entirely by trained mice) and the landlord's grandson, whom Coraline treats with the disdain expected of a girl her age -- especially after he gives her a doll sewn in her image as if she were the kind of girl to play with dolls. Even the mysterious little door hidden behind old wallpaper is a letdown; at first glance, it leads to a bricked up wall Coraline's mother believes was erected in the house when it was divided into separate apartments. Of course, the door isn't just a door, the cat isn't just a cat, and the doll isn't just a doll. They're all connected to an Other world almost exactly the same as Coraline's, with a few major exceptions: it's magic, much more dangerous, and ruled by a malevolent woman who first disguises herself as Coraline's "Other Mother" (voiced by Teri Hatcher), identical to her real mother save for having buttons instead of eyes. She lavishes Coraline with attention and adventure, but living in her wonderland comes at a steep price. Those familiar with Neil Gaiman's work, particularly his children's books, know that he writes a world as fantastic and charming as it is macabre and dangerous. An adaptation of Coraline was a worrisome prospect, because Coraline is only a children's book by the thinnest of margins, and toning down the creep factor would have done a great disservice to all involved. Thankfully, Coraline is appropriately dark, and like its inspiration, is only a children's movie by the thinnest of margins. Director Henry Selick's experiences directing The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach have served Coraline well; the Other world is somewhere Jack Skellington and Roald Dahl would build their summer homes. It's hard to lose oneself in a film that is Coraline's combination of ingredients -- fictional, animated, and 3-D -- but that's exactly what happens. Coraline is equal parts fanciful, menacing, beautiful, and subversive. The result is an audience -- adult as well as children -- that doesn't feel at all silly rooting passionately for Coraline to listen to the talking cat and get out of bizarro land before it's too late.