Occasionally, in lieu of a standard review, we like to discuss new movies in a more raw, back-and-forth form—the way we might walking out of the theater or riding the subway home. Below is our correspondence on Henry Selick’s new stop-motion film Coraline, which opens nationwide on Friday.

1.
To: Alisa Harris
From: David Sessions

Alisa,

I can’t wait to get into talking about Coraline, as it’s one of the most stunning things I’ve seen in a while (I would go with the requisite “this year,” but that’s been all of 35 days). First I’ll give a bit of a summary for everyone else and do my best not to spoil anything.

Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) is smart, adventurous junior-higher transplanted to a rickety pink house/apartment in the country, where her gardening-writer parents plan to practice what they preach. They end up glued to their laptops as much as ever, and the bored and neglected Coraline goes searching for trouble. She soon finds a mysterious door that leads to an imaginative alternate reality in which her parents cook her favorite food and design elaborate gardens in her honor. But the “other” parents are a little too friendly, and what’s more, they have weird, sewn-on buttons for eyes. Things go horribly wrong—in a very Tim Burton direction—and an endangered Coraline ends up racing to get her boring old life back.

This movie is supposed to be a big cultural statement about the wonders of stop-motion animation, an elaborate, tedious art form that only gets tried every few years (most recently by Tim Burton, Selwick’s collaborator on The Nightmare Before Christas). Oh, and did I mention it was shot stereoscopically? That makes it the first stop-motion film to be shown in 3-D, as well as the first animated film released by the arty Focus Features. Right off the bat, it’s wondrous in a way Pixar isn’t—incredibly life-like, jolty, hand-made. The 3-D reality is startling from the moment a toothpick juts out at your face in the opening credits sequence.

Coraline is based on an imaginative novella by Neil Gaiman, but its plotting is the one area where I don’t feel it competes with a Pixar film. While equal in style, it doesn’t have the heart of Wall-E or the scale of Finding Nemo. But with the seriously unbelievable vividness of every frame, I don’t have much complaining to do even about that. I’d just say that overall, it struck me as a little too measured, too careful, letting the story unfold in such a methodic fashion that nothing was very surprising, and momentum didn’t add to the freaky tension of the visuals.

My main question is about all the kids in the audience. I think they got into our screening via standby tickets, but I didn’t hear a sound from them the entire time. I certainly wouldn’t take my 6-year old to see a movie as terrifying as dark and terrifying as Coraline. It’s clearly intended to be a kids’ film, unlike the obviously mature Corpse Bride, but I suspect a few parents might be unprepared for how startling it is at times. Oh, and the pasties? What was that about? I’ll leave it to you to speculate.

Hiding my eyes from way-too-old-to-be-bare claymation breasts,

David

2.
To: David Sessions
From: Alisa Harris

How about those pasties? I believe that “too-old-to-be-bare” claymation character was very proud of those bouncing bosoms and I also think perhaps the revolting realness of them was a way of subtly undercutting the magical fantasy Coraline was then experiencing. (Or maybe they wanted to give the parents and random young professionals like us a good laugh. Probably that.)

You said it struck you as “a little too measured, too careful, letting the story unfold in such a methodic fashion that nothing was very surprising.” You’re right. It was such a classic cautionary fairy tale. The nasty daughter is lured by a witch disguised as an angel and is soundly punished for her bitterness and discontent. The life-and-death solving of a riddle is a classic fairytale device. The quest is classic right down to the numbering of the three tasks she has to complete. It was the boogieman story updated for a modern audience—downright moralistic in fact.

There are two ways of reacting to that: 1) it’s formulaic and trite; 2) it’s classic. I kind of lean towards the latter, especially when it comes to a kid’s movie. Children today could use more cautionary tales and at this point, straightforward moralism is so unusual it’s quaint. There’s a reason these classic devices come back—there’s something roundly, deeply satisfying about them. And after years of determinedly twisted tales like Shrek, the old is almost new. What do you think?

You asked about the kids and whether it was too creepy. Interesting in that if you read the Grimm’s brothers and you’ll see that they’re all so dark and twisted, brutal, bloody and strange. Children have morbid imaginations and one should harness that natural terror for good, don’t you think? I’m being ironic now; but maybe kids have more capacity and appreciation for creepiness than we usually suppose.

It may not have had the heart or scale of the Pixar masterpieces, but it was fantastical in a way that the others aren’t. I loved the detail of the garden panorama. I like the thought of a mouse really being a tiny member of a marching band—and the tiny member of a marching band really being a rat. Nothing is what it seems.

All about taxidermified angel dogs,

Alisa