Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Nov. 8th, 2010 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreIs there a proper term for the “(British) kid opens door to other world” plot, aside from “Narnia knockoff.” (Which I don’t think most are, but that’s not the point.)
Coraline and her (very busy and distracted) parents have just moved into a new flat in a building full of eccentric neighbors. While exploring (because her parents are too busy to entertain her) she discovers a door that doesn’t lead anywhere but to a brick wall. Later, however it opens to a corridor that takes her to another world with an “Other” mother and father who want her to stay with them as their daughter, and soon her real parents disappear, prompting Coraline to make a bargain with the Other Mother to save them, and others she’s trapped in her world.
It’s fun and creepy, but I wanted to know exactly what the Other Mother was, and had hoped for more of Coraline’s neighbors. I liked, though, that her parents weren’t bad parents exactly, just much too busy to be able to give and extremely precocious child the kind of attention she wants.
Aside from deciding that girls can’t save the day on their own and adding a boy to help Coraline, how’s the movie?
Coraline and her (very busy and distracted) parents have just moved into a new flat in a building full of eccentric neighbors. While exploring (because her parents are too busy to entertain her) she discovers a door that doesn’t lead anywhere but to a brick wall. Later, however it opens to a corridor that takes her to another world with an “Other” mother and father who want her to stay with them as their daughter, and soon her real parents disappear, prompting Coraline to make a bargain with the Other Mother to save them, and others she’s trapped in her world.
It’s fun and creepy, but I wanted to know exactly what the Other Mother was, and had hoped for more of Coraline’s neighbors. I liked, though, that her parents weren’t bad parents exactly, just much too busy to be able to give and extremely precocious child the kind of attention she wants.
Aside from deciding that girls can’t save the day on their own and adding a boy to help Coraline, how’s the movie?
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Date: 2010-11-09 02:50 am (UTC)I was really disappointed in the movie, not just because of the feminism fail but because I felt it flattened out the numinousness of the book and its charm.
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Date: 2010-11-09 04:13 am (UTC)Since most of the book is Coraline's thoughts and mental observations, I can see where it'd very easily lose some of the charm.
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Date: 2010-11-09 05:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-09 03:19 pm (UTC)But the book! ^_^