Teri Hatcher takes on three voices in the new 3D animation release, CoralineBy Eunice Moseley
On February
6, 2009 Focus Features presents Coraline, a Laika Entertainment - in association with Pandemonium, feature animation film.
Coraline is a 3D "stop-motion" animation of a children's book "Coraline" written by Neil Gaimen.
"In 1990 I started writing Coraline...then I moved to America and I had
one third of a book at the time," Gaimen said about when he started to write down the story he created for his children.
"Each night I would write 50 to 100 words, essentially a page a week."
The idea for the book, the story of an eleven year-old girl who is being a bit neglected by her
hard working parents, while dealing with a new home and neighborhood, and is then enticed by an alternative family through
a hidden door in the new home, a family that turns out to be monstrous, came from his first daughter who at the time asked
him to tell her a story like that.
Dakota Flanning (The Secret Life of Bees) is the voice of Coraline, Robert Bailey,
Jr. (The Happening) is the voice of her bother-some neighbor Wybie Lovat; Keith David is the voice of the neighbors cat; John
Hodgman is the voice of the father (and other father), and Teri Hatcher (Desperate Housewives) is the voice of her busy "real
mother," her doting "other mother," and the "dangerous/monster mother."
"It's my first animation movie and I always wanted to be in an animation movie.
I got to play three different levels of people," actress Teri Hatcher said about getting the role of the mother. "I
wasn't familiar with the book, but I was familiar with Neil as a writer."
The Coraline movie was directed by Henry Selick (who is also co-producer and screen writer) and it has
the influence of his dark film, The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Coraline could be considered by some, like myself, to be too dark for some young kids, so I suggest to parents see
the film first (because it is an animation for adults) and then make the decision to let them see it. The new 3D may even
be a bit frightening to young kids as well.
That aside though, the film was very entertaining from beginning to end and
for those who read the book, it even has new characters, and twist and turns that you will not want to miss.
The best part of Caroline, to me, is its message to kids, that "the grass
is not always greener on the other side" and of course its 3D experience! Not only can you wear the glasses later as
shades, but the 3D is amazing, to see things and people on the screen that seem to come out at you, as close as inches away.
I had to take the glasses off just to make sure it wasn't real.
"I believe Henry added the 3D so the ‘other' world was different from the real world," Neil said
when asked about the use of the 3D.
Coraline is MPAA-Rated
PG (for thematic elements, scary images, some language and suggestive humor). www.coraline.com
