Four stars. Rating: PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang
Norman Babcock sees dead people. Constantly.
And he cheerfully chats with
them.
 |
| Meet the Babcock family: from left, Grandma, Mom, Dad, Norman and his teenage sister Courtney. You'll likely notice that Grandma seems somewhat ghostly; that's because she has been dead for years ... although this hasn't stopped her loving relationship with Norman. Nobody else in the family appreciates the boy's, ah, unusual gift. |
This unlikely talent has prompted
nothing but derision, dismay and the unwanted attention of the booger-picking
school bully. “Weird” kids always get singled out for abuse, and Norman is much
weirder than most.
He’s also the hero of ParaNorman, the newest stop-motion treat from animator Travis Knight’s Oregon-based
LAIKA Inc., which rose from the ashes of the financially strapped studio
founded by claymation pioneer Will Vinton. Although LAIKA had a hand in Tim
Burton’s Corpse Bride, the new company’s first wholly in-house feature was its
awesome 2009 adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.
ParaNorman is LAIKA’s second big-screen
film, and the first written as an original concept by Chris Butler, who worked
on storyboards for both Corpse Bride and Coraline. Butler shares
directorial duties on this new movie with Sam Fell, whose previous credits
include co-helming Flushed Away and The Tale of Despereaux.
The story is funny, snarky,
occasionally scary — perhaps too much so for very young viewers — and
unexpectedly poignant at times. The voice casting is delicious, and the
93-minute film moves along at a lively, suspenseful pace.
And the animation is simply
smashing. Stop-motion is such a labor-intensive process; the mere completion of
such an ambitious project deserves applause. That it turned out so well is
icing on the cake.
The random bits of production
data are staggering. ParaNorman took two years to make, involving more than
320 designers, artists, animators and technicians. At any given time, these
people worked on 52 separate shooting units, representing the various settings
of this droll, macabre little tale. An entire week would be spent, carefully
manipulating these little puppets, to get between one and two minutes of
footage.
None of which would matter a jot,
of course, if we weren’t engaged by both the story and its characters.
We meet Norman (voiced by Kodi
Smit-McPhee) as he enjoys a televised horror movie in the company of his
beloved grandmother (Elaine Stritch). Only one problem here: Grandma has been
dead for years, a fact that exasperates Norman’s father (Jeff Garlin), deeply
concerns his mother (Leslie Mann), and flat-out disgusts his self-absorbed
older sister, Courtney (Anna Kendrick).
En route to school each day,
Norman politely greets the dozens of lost souls who inhabit the streets and
buildings of Blithe Hollow, a small New England town that cherishes its
somewhat grim 18th century association with Salem-esque witch trials. At Blithe
Middle school, Norman is routinely pummeled by the loutish, spelling-challenged
Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and given a wide berth by all the other kids.
All but Neil (Tucker Albrizzi), a
genial little fellow also teased because of his weight and various other
characteristics (including his irritable bowel syndrome). Neil has made peace
with his lot in life; he sympathizes with Norman and wants to be friends.
Norman resists at first, perhaps wary of additional heartbreak, but eventually
realizes that Neil is the real deal.
Not that the boys have any time
to enjoy their new bond. Thanks to a warning from the town’s resident smelly
old man, Mr. Prenderghast (John Goodman), Norman learns that the local witch’s
ancient curse is scheduled to surface anew on this, the 300th anniversary of
her having been put to death. Only Norman, with his ability to communicate with
the dead, can stop the curse from unfolding.
Unfortunately, Prenderghast dies
before explaining how to do this, and the bothersome Alvin’s interference
causes further delays. The result: Shambling zombies erupt from their graves
outside of town, and everybody in this pop culture-weaned community knows what
that means: The zombies will want to eat their brains!
Norman desperately tries to neutralize
the curse before the zombies — and the terrified residents of Blithe Hollow —
destroy their entire community. He is helped (and hindered) in this quest by
Neil, Alvin, Courtney and Neil’s dim-bulb older brother, Mitch (Casey Affleck),
whose hunky physique captivates Courtney far more than she’s frightened by the
zombies.
Progress ... proves problematic.
All this horror movie-style
mayhem unfolds against the delightfully demented backdrop of Blithe Hollow’s downtown
shops and tree-shrouded neighborhoods. The LAIKA animators had a lot of fun
with this small-town setting, giving the community a sagging, mildly
dilapidated look, like Disneyland’s Main Street gone slightly to seed, with
asymmetry and broken edges.
The town looks lived in, with
torn circulars on lamp posts, and bits of plastic bags fluttering on fences (a
neat trick, in a stop-motion universe).
The character animation is
equally droll, starting with Norman’s spiky hair, which sticks straight up like
an unmowed lawn. Courtney’s impossibly tiny waist and bulging hips are
exaggerated as hilariously as Mitch’s pecs, while other people are shaped along
quite unusual lines; Norman’s father’s face, for example, is shaped like a
trapezoid, building almost to a point at the top of his flat head (not many
brains for the zombies to munch).
The zombies are the funniest —
and most ghoulishly creepy — with their various limbs constantly getting lost,
snatched or sliced off. Naturally, these disconnected body parts remain
ambulatory, and desperate to re-connect with their greater selves. The story’s
“ick factor” is guaranteed to delight adolescents raised on Lemony Snicket and
R.L. Stine.
The most pleasant surprise,
however, is the unexpected tonal shift that occurs as the third act kicks into
crazy gear. Expectations are upended, and quite cleverly: a nice bit of scripting
from Butler.
Jon Brion’s score is
enthusiastically zany, which we’d expect from the fellow who wrote the music
for bent films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I Heart
Huckabees. Cinematographer Tristan Oliver has a field day, varying film grain
and illumination levels to suit each scene, while editor Christopher Murrie
keeps things moving crisply.
On the other hand, LAIKA’s
much-heralded “stereoscopic 3D” effects aren’t such a much here. Coraline was
a truly marvelous 3D experience, but that added dimensionality isn’t well
utilized in ParaNorman. Save your money and see it in conventional 2D.
Aside from its inventive visuals
and agreeably warped storyline, ParaNorman deserves credit for its core saga
of a misfit’s journey toward redemption and empowerment ... not to mention a
sly message on the need for tolerance and inclusion. Big concepts, perhaps, for
such a captivating genre parody ... but that’s what makes ParaNorman even
more fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment