One wouldn't want to keep up with these Joneses who live in a Victorian boardinghouse that might have been designed by Gomez Addams before it was quartered into bizarro flats. Two dog-fancying eccentrics, elderly actresses with packs of terriers living and stuffed, cohabit one. A Russian circus strongman, his army of trained mice, and lots of stinky cheese reside in another. The Joneses (voices of Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman), new arrivals, occupy the third.
The fourth apartment is empty. But when Coraline (voice of Dakota Fanning) finds a key to a passageway between the Jones place and the one presumed vacant, she discovers her dream parents there.
The dream flat looks larger, swanker and sunnier than the cramped, drab move-in where she and her stressed-out parents reside.
Coraline's "other mother," cheery and slim, presides over the stove and serves up breakfasts of tasty sausages. Her "other father" is demonstrative, composes music instead of plant-catalog copy, and seeds a magic garden of iridescent blooms expressly for Coraline to play amongst. Except for the fact that they have black buttons where their eyes should be, her dream parents are perfect. Or are they?
Selick's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's primally charged saga is The Wizard of Oz of stop-motion, as deeply unsettling as the flying monkeys in that family classic. The filmmaker is the gifted, if somewhat ghoulish, talent behind The Nightmare Before Christmas, and his new movie is suitable for brave kids who are at least age 10 and like their stories dark.
