Paranorman

Saw Paranorman, a studio Laika stop-motion film about a little boy, Norman, who can talk to ghosts. Needless to say, he's misunderstood by his parents, bullied at school, and maintains an gumly cool and quirky attitude. Anyway, he lives in some crypto-salem where witch trials took place. The witch's curse, he learns, will strike tonight unless he can stop it! He teams up with his exasperated sister, the school bully, Norman's fat friend, and the fat friend's lunkhead brother. The film is lumpy at parts and was a little too cutesy for me (he quells a mob, for example, by shouting "Stop!" Yeah kid, no.) but when it hits its climax, oh man! We are treated to some downright pornographic stop-motion. Just gorgeous, gorgeous effects.

The film didn't really capture the new england feel, I think. It felt very west-coast. I think it's supposed to be fall but everyone's dressed very lightly. At one point we get a shot of downtown nightlife and there's a woman in a little black dress, a latina bartender at a dive bar, a man in a turtleneck. These are more big-city types in NEw England. Where's the Carhartt and LL Bean? There should be some women in sensible pastel-colored polar fleece and everyone should be wearing boots, even turtleneck guy and black dress lady. It felt off to me, possibly only because the town looked too warm.

The "acting" also leaves something to be desired. Animated films are usually made by recording the actors reading their lines in various intonations and then stitching the most natural-sounding ones together. This allows for greater freedom for the animators, but sometimes you wind up with incongruous, choppy dialogue. Studio Laika does some top-tier stopmotion but it's got a bad case of the choppies here. At one point Norman throws a book at someone, shouting angrily "How could you?" only no, not angrily, just kind of sadly and sulkily. The voice actor clearly had no idea that book-hurling was going to happen and assumed Norman was feeling sad and sulky. Choppy.

But the point of the film is really the visuals and the quirky story and there it shines. I honestly did not see a lot of the film coming, which is surprising for a kid's film (even a quirky kids film. They have formulas too, you know.) and like I say, the showdown at the end is completely, utterly amazing. Top points. This isn't one of those films I'm gonna tell everyone to see but if you're bored some day, give it shot.