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"Coraline" (PG, 1 hr., 40 min.)

"Coraline" revels in the nightmarish elements of classic fairy tales that scare and delight kids. Director Henry Selick's brilliant stop-motion animated movie (based on the book by Neil Gaiman) is a work of such gorgeous, funny-frightening complexity, that it begs for repeat viewings. It's exciting fare for most kids 8 and older, but with the strong caveat that some easily spooked kids as old as 10 or 12 may find the film's darkly moody second half upsetting. After all, it is about a little girl who enters a menacing through-the-looking-glass world and nearly loses her parents. A central theme focuses on kids feeling lonely and unwanted because their parents are so busy they neglect them. In the second half, there is a creepy, metallic spider-witch intent on harming children.

Selick, who has directed masterpieces of stop-motion animation before ("The Nightmare Before Christmas," PG, 1993; "James and the Giant Peach, " PG, 1996) spent years on "Coraline" which was shot in a subtler 3-D that isn't gimmicky or in-your-face. The characters and sets are handmade puppets and miniatures, which had to be adjusted minutely for every frame. The result amazes.

Coraline Jones (voice of Dakota Fanning) moves with her parents (Teri Hatcher as Mother, John Hodgman as Father) into the ancient Pink Palace Apartments. Her folks are writers who don't have time for her and Coraline is bored. A boy named Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr.) tries to befriend her, but she's a cranky little loner. A mysterious cat follows her around, too. She's not too impressed with her new neighbors -- the former acrobat Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane) and his performing mice, and the ancient, odd actresses Miss Spink (Jennifer Saunders) and Miss Forcible (Dawn French).

One night, a sleepless Coraline follows scampering mice through a miniature door in a wall, then crawls and falls down a sort of rabbit hole (there are literary and cinematic echoes of "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Wizard of Oz" throughout). Coraline lands in a place that looks exactly like her home, except it's clean and bright, with an Other Mother (also Hatcher) who actually cooks, and an Other Father (Hodgman) who has time for her. But they have buttons instead of eyes, and the more Coraline visits, the stranger they seem: They'd like to replace her eyes with buttons, too. There are all sorts of surreal creatures that come to life, from plants to bugs to Scottish terriers to people who unzip their whole bodies and reveal younger, thinner selves inside. These things are wondrous, but also unsettling. The script includes a few crass words, and one of the elderly actresses, Miss Forcible, has a cartoonishly busty figure. In a fantasy sequence, the actresses wear scanty costumes.

I go into such detail because "Coraline" is such an extraordinary work. If parents have concerns, they should (if finances permit) see the film first before deciding whether their children are ready for it. Remember, most kids like to be scared -- at least a little -- as long as things end well. And they do in "Coraline."

Beyond the Ratings Game: Movie Reviews for various ages

-- OK FOR KIDS 8 AND OLDER:

"Coraline" PG (NEW) -- Director Henry Selick's brilliant stop-motion animated movie (the characters are puppets, the sets constructed) is based on the book by Neil Gaiman. It is a work of gorgeous, funny-frightening complexity and exciting fare for kids 8 and older who love classic scary fairy tales. But that comes with a strong caveat that easily spooked youngsters as old as 10 or 12 may find the film's dark second half upsetting. After all, it is about a little girl who enters a menacing through-the-looking-glass world and nearly loses her parents. It deals with kids who feel lonely and unwanted because their parents are too busy. In the second half, there is a creepy, metallic spider-witch intent on harming children. "Coraline" was shot in 3-D but in a subtle way that doesn't pop in your face. Coraline (voice of Dakota Fanning) moves with her parents (Teri Hatcher as Mother, John Hodgman as Father) into the ancient Pink Palace Apartments. Her folks, both writers, don't have time for her. A boy named Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr.) tries to befriend her, but she's a cranky loner. Nor is she impressed by the neighbors -- a former acrobat, Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane), and his performing mice, and the doddering actresses Miss Spink (Jennifer Saunders) and Miss Forcible (Dawn French). One night Coraline follows mice scampering through a small door and down a sort of rabbit hole into a place that looks exactly like home, only bright and cheery, with her Other Mother actually cooking and her Other Father able to chat. But these parents have buttons instead of eyes. Soon they try to replace her eyes with buttons. Then her real parents disappear. In this surreal world, creatures and plants keep morphing into new things, making for wondrous but unsettling images. The film includes a few crass words and shows the actresses in scanty costumes (one with a cartoonishly huge bust). It does end happily.

"The Pink Panther 2" PG (NEW) -- A vast improvement over Steve Martin's lame first attempt ("The Pink Panther," PG, 2006) to update the classic 1960s Peter Sellers/Blake Edwards Inspector Clouseau comedies, this movie will make kids and adults who appreciate silliness snort with laughter. The incompetent-but-lucky Clouseau is taken off Paris parking duty by his jealous superior (John Cleese) after a series of major thefts (Magna Carta, the Shroud of Turin, and, of course, the Pink Panther diamond). Clouseau (Martin) and his old partner (Jean Reno) join a team of top investigators (Alfred Molina, Andy Garcia, Aishwarya Rai, Yuki Matsuzaki). In one ingenious sequence, Clouseau skulks outside the mansion of a suspect (Jeremy Irons), his pratfalls captured on silent security cameras in a priceless homage to silent film comics such as Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Clouseau also tumbles off the pope's balcony, dressed in the pontiff's robes, yet the scene is inoffensive. Lily Tomlin will amuse adults as a political-correctness counselor. There is much slightly bawdy sexual innuendo, some of it verbal ("foreplay") and some of it visual and verbal, focusing on cleavages and derrieres. There are mild ethnic insults.

"Hotel for Dogs" PG -- A sister and brother living in bad foster care fill the hole in their lives by sheltering stray dogs in this contrived, yet cuddly fantasy. Sixteen-year-old Andi (Emma Roberts) and 11-year-old Bruce (Jake T. Austin) hide their adopted Jack Russell from their comically awful foster parents (Lisa Kudrow and Kevin Dillon) and their kind social worker (Don Cheadle). The kids scam local merchants for cash to feed their pet. One day, the dog leads them into an abandoned hotel where they find two more strays. With the help of three neighborhood kids (Johnny Simmons, Kyla Pratt and Troy Gentile), Andi and Bruce begin sheltering a wild array of pooches, and Bruce builds ingenious machines to feed and exercise them. Amid the poop and piddle jokes are themes about losing parents and a flawed foster care system. It is hinted that pound dogs are euthanized. A kid kicks an adult in the crotch, and there is a teen kiss.

"Inkheart" PG -- Kids 10 and older who've read the book will have an easy time following this handsome but convoluted film. Others should see it too, because it makes reading books seem wildly exciting. We learn that some people who read aloud are "silvertongues" who can cause characters from books to materialize. Mo Folchart (Brendan Fraser) is one, we see in a prologue. Years later, he and his 12-year-old daughter Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennett) are in Europe. Meggie's mother Resa (Sienna Guillory) disappeared long ago. Mo won't say why, so Meggie feels abandoned by her. In a bookshop he finds a rare copy of a fantasy novel titled "Inkheart." A character from the book, Dustfinger (Paul Bettany), appears. Mo and Meggie flee to their oddball aunt riotous Helen Mirren) as other "Inkheart" villains, with words tattooed on their faces, follow them. These villains might scare under-10s, threatening to stab and shoot people. There's a people-eating monster, rare crude humor and mild sexual innuendo.

"Paul Blart: Mall Cop" PG -- Comic Kevin James brings a lovely mix of heart and innocence to the title role in this amusing family comedy about a buffoonish shopping-mall security guard. Paul scoots around on a Segway, trying to look serious and cop-like while flirting awkwardly with the girl (Jayma Mays) at the hair weave kiosk. Divorced, he lives with his mom (Shirley Knight) and teen daughter Maya (charming Raini Rodriguez). When a gang of robbers takes hostages in the mall, Paul tries to foil them solo. Kids under 10 may be upset when the bad guys threaten repeatedly to kill hostages. There is gunfire and an explosion. Paul's daughter is put in danger. It's implied that Paul's Segway hits a dog. We see the back of a shopper's bra as she beats Paul up. He gets drunk and we see a tattoo on his bottom. There is mild sexual innuendo and swearing.

-- PG-13s OF VARYING INTENSITY AND A PG MORE FOR TEENS:

"He's Just Not That Into You" PG (NEW) -- Based on the popular relationship book, the movie takes the nonfiction advice and adds characters and plot, resulting in a highly entertaining romantic comedy (with some drama). The premise is that little girls are told if a boy is nasty to you, "that means he really likes you," which is wrong, and colors how women deal with men later on. Set in Baltimore, the film follows Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin), who believes every guy who says he'll call again, and nearly stalks them if they don't. Her latest, Conor (Kevin Connolly), really pines for Anna (Scarlett Johansson), who takes up with Ben (Bradley Cooper), who's married to Janine (Jennifer Connelly), whose friend Beth (Jennifer Aniston) lives happily with Neil (Ben Affleck), who won't marry her, while Mary (Drew Barrymore), who knows Conor through business e-mails, can't seem to meet anyone. Meanwhile, Gigi gets platonic pointers from bar manager Alex (Justin Long). It's all crisp, funny and poignant. The film is best geared to high-schoolers 16 and older for its adult themes. There is a semiexplicit sexual tryst and another that is less explicit, but with implied nudity. There is crude sexual slang, midrange profanity, drinking, and implied smoking.

"Taken" (NEW) -- Liam Neeson plays Bryan, a former CIA operative who uses his expertise in lethal violence to rescue his 18-year-old daughter (Maggie Grace) after she and a friend are abducted by Eastern European gangsters while on a trip to Paris. Worried to distraction at the prospect of his daughter heading to Europe with only a friend (Katie Cassidy), Bryan becomes utterly calm in a crisis. After she calls him in a panic that she and her friend are about to be abducted by thugs, he uses what he hears on the phone and his intelligence contacts to quickly home in on an Albanian gang that kidnaps girls, drugs them and uses them as prostitutes, auctioning virgins for large sums. It is a lurid theme. The film is clever in its use of re-enactment to show Bryan's thought process. The stabbing, shooting, exploding, head-bashing, glass-smashing, car-crashing violence is intense but not graphic. Similarly, the portrayal of street prostitution and the drugged girls in a brothel is not explicit. There is midrange profanity, some crude sexual references, but not much. The villains as portrayed feed a negative stereotype of Muslims.

"New in Town" PG -- Teen girls may find some laughs in this flawed romantic comedy, if not in its love story then in its funny, eccentric supporting characters. But the movie is a frustrating experience. It's starts out fresh and funny, then falls into cliches. Renee Zellweger plays Lucy, a brittle executive with a Miami food conglomerate who's sent to a small factory in rural Minnesota -- in winter -- to supervise product changes and layoffs. She encounters plenty of hostility, but kindness from her scrap-bookin', tapioca-makin' secretary (wonderful Siobhan Fallon Hogan). Lucy and the cute union rep (Harry Connick Jr.) meet, clash, then fall in love, but Zellweger never seems to melt. It's an odd, charmless performance. There is mild profanity (stronger bits are muffled), toilet humor, a religion joke, a gag about nipples in a non-see-through sweater, sexual innuendo, skimpy lingerie attached to an aerial, and drinking.

"The Uninvited" -- Only halfway scary and with a groan-worthy ending, "The Uninvited" still has enough jumpy moments for teens who dig waking-nightmare horror. Anna (Emily Browning) comes home from a stay in a psychiatric hospital brought on by the death of her ailing mother (Maya Massar) in a fire. Her dad (David Strathairn) now lives with her late mother's nurse (Elizabeth Banks). Anna and her sister (Arielle Kebbel) try to expose the nurse as a gold digger. Anna hallucinates about ghostly children and her mother's burned corpse. The film shows bloodied, contorted dead bodies and someone's back breaking. It has a suicide theme, references to child murders, jokes about condoms and a vibrator, implied sexual situations, drunkenness and rare profanity. Not for middle-schoolers.

-- AN R:

"Underworld: Rise of the Lycans" -- An impressive cast of British actors brings Shakespearean style to this dark and hilariously grandiose vampires-versus-werewolves saga. High-school fans of gothic horror ought to be entertained. Intended as a prequel to "Underworld" (R, 2003) and "Underworld: Evolution" (R, 2006), "... Rise of the Lycans" is set in medieval times, when Viktor (Bill Nighy), king of the vampires, rules his castle inside a mountain. But werewolves lurk in the forest and Viktor's daughter (Rhona Mitra) is having a thing with a hybrid human-werewolf slave (Michael Sheen) who leads a rebellion. The film is nearly colorless except for the blood, but the violence is more stylized than graphic. Still, there are impalements, throat-cuttings, skull-crushings, and a semiexplicit, semi-nude sexual situation. The snarling, racing werewolves are creepy.

(c) 2009, Washington Post Writers Group.

This news arrived on: 02/05/2009

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