Coraline: Don't take a young/sensitive child to see it.

[FluffyBunnyGoneBad]

Ghost children have their eyes taken away, main character kidnapped, weird spider wants to take her eyes. Her parents taken. Too weird, creepy overtones. It could give a small/sensitive child nightmares for months! I wish I hadn't gone. Story is similar to the People under the stairs. Main character even gets attacked by plants.

sensitive dd2 (just 6) loved it
"mummy they sew buttons on their eyes"

I think it's the psychological scariness of it that makes it more alarming; Doctor Who is about aliens and adults, but this is about a little girl and an evil replica family. Funnily enough, the first thing DS2 said to me about it was, "No way should that have been a PG. It should definitely have been at least a 12A."

dd is 7, and has flat out refused the mere suggestion seeing it.

It scared me more then some of the children. Maybe I should have written 'not suitable for some sensitive parents'

My 7y has sad she doesn't want to see it, at least not at the cinema. DH was interested in going I think. Don't think I'd be keen. Maybe DD can watch it when it is on Sky one day.

My dd read the book last year and couldn't sleep for 3 nights. She was 12!

Just been reading the Parent's Guide info for the film. Sounds scary for me, lol!

Sex & Nudity

-Two women with large breasts are performing on stage. One of them is wearing pasties, but it is in the context of "The Birth of Venus" by Botticelli.

• A man claims that he has writer's rash on his rear end. Nothing is said, he is cut off before he can say where he has it, and just points to it.

Violence & Gore

• A parental figure insists that a child take out her own eyeballs and replace them with buttons. The needle and thread are shown several times.

• A parental figure transforms into a grotesque and frightening figure who threatens a child.

• A parental figure has murdered three small children.

• A parental figure operates farm machinery to threaten a child with bodily harm or death.

• A child is imprisoned in a dark place with three eerie ghosts.

• We see a boy who has had his mouth sewn with stitches so that he is permanently smiling.

• A cat kills two rats over the duration of the movie.

• We see a wall covered in real dead dogs stuffed with sawdust, but with angel clothing on.

• A man's body is reduced to a horrific vegetative state as punishment for his actions.

• A woman transforms into a monster.

• We hear tales of people's eyes getting ripped out, and being replaced with buttons. We do not see this, only the ghosts of the people mentioned in the tales.

• A cat rips a monster's button eyes off.

-A mother says that her daughter, Coraline, has scratched her knee.

Profanity

There are terms like "crap" and "drunk" that you may not want younger children to use.

Alcohol/Drugs/Smoking

• One of the characters is constantly referred to as being an alcoholic, even though he is not actually one.

Frightening/Intense Scenes

• Some of the scenes from the "other" world may/will frighten.

• The second half of the film is chock-filled with images and ideas that should be very frightening to most.

• The safety and security of "home" and "parental love" are turned upside down. - The "Other Mother" turns into a terrifying monster whose button-eyes are ripped out by a cat and traps a girl in a cone in the floor who is tying to get out, very intense and very frightening.

-The "Other Mother" and "Other Father" want to sew buttons onto Coraline's eyes, but you never see them do it.

If it was a movie rather then a cartoon it really wouldn't have had that PG rating.

Hula - I am ed at that list
How could anyone imagine such content would be suitable for children.........

I can only assume it is the act that it is a carton tha keeps it being a PG

I agree. I do wish I had read up on it properly first. I thought a cartoon wouldn't be horrifying. Doh! I had never heard of the story before. I wish I had checked on here first.

ach, PG is fine for the film. It's a rqather macabre fairytale, as true fairytales often are. No way a 12.

If you listed Little Red Riding Hood as a stark list of gruesome acts, no one would ever think 'U'

re profanity. I remember one crap (which Americans seem to consider a non-profanity. I cannot recall repeated mentions of someone being drunk. Must have missed that.

It was the russian? bloke who was a 'drunk'

The wolf was mild compared to the 'other mum'.

oh yeah, the russian guy.

I know the wold is mild compared to other mum. I'm just saying the wolf wouldn't be U, it weould be PG.

Tim Burton is always likely to be very dark and gothic and mind-messin at times

I've seen a few Tim Burton movies, this has to be the worst one though. I don't think the target audience was right though. Maybe as an adult I picked up a few of the underlying nasties of the movie. Maybe children just see what's in front of them IYSWIM. You could tell she was feeling unloved by her own parents, which is why she was attracted to the other ones. It's them wantng to keep her away from her family that was more disturbing then all the rest. This and them wanting to sew buttons in her eyes, the other dad said 'it will only hurt a bit', alot of messages in the film. Quite disturbing.

I think the grown ups are reading way too much into this. It's a horror story for kids. If it was tame and had no scary bits in, it'd be just like every other saccharine bit of pap that Disney or Warner Bros. decides to chuck at us.

Personally, I think it was a great movie for kids of 8 and over...and some braver ones who are younger. No scarier than the real fairy tales that our parents and grandparents were subjected to.

It's like feeding our youngsters stuff without seasoning or flavour. If we don't challenge them occasionally, how are they going to progress from the Disney Princess nonsense or Cars blandness??

I think both kinds of movies have their place, but the reviews say clearly that this may be disturbing for younger children. It wasn't a U, it was PG...that means we have to take responsibility for checking it out. It's got no more bad language in it than the last Potter movie; no more nudity than a lot of tv programmes and the fact that it's a cartoon really does make it totally different to real life nudity.

I think the messages in the movie wouldn't even enter the kids heads, unless they were much older. And even then, they'd have to be pretty deep thinkers.

It's up to each individual parent at the end of the day, but I think this is one of the great stop start animation movies of our time. BTW, I didn't think this was Tim Burton related. Isn't is just the comparisons with Corpse Bride and Nightmare that make everyone link it with him? I thought it was someone else????

squilly, I think you're right. I don't think he had much to do with it. It's by the same director as the guy who directed Nightmare, I beleive. Only googled quickly

But Coraline is by Neil Gaiman! For me that makes it all ok

I actually bought Coraline (the book) as an intro to Neil Gaiman for my kids, before we move on to the likes of Neverwhere and American gods in a few years

Agree with you ManateeequineOhara. Have you tried the Graveyard book? It's just sublime!

Nudity and sex in the movie? I mean, what kind of child sees sex and nudity in that movie? My kids are 4 and 2 years old, unable to watch things like Kung Fu Panda and similars. Not even Nemo. They get scared since they are not used to TV. They liked it. They probably did not understand the "plot" but enjoyed the cinema experience and the 3D staff.
Nudity and Sex? All the hidden messages... Alcoholism?
One thing I cannot understand about this country (i am a foreigner and love many other things) is this obsession with sex and nudity... Children are more natural than all this.. and so should be parents... They are so obsessed about sex by the age of 5 (and only about the scary bits...abuse, etc). It is quite shocking really.
The film is technically brilliant. But it does not give much more than that

Those sex and nudity examples in that long list are indeed ridiculous. A cartoony figure of a near-naked woman with large breasts - so what. A man about to scratch his bottom - childish humour

Absolutely fantastic movie. But I knew I would enjoy it, Selick & Gaimen = Hea-ven

I hope Selick picks up The Graveyard Book too

DD is 3 and at the moment I do regard her too young to see this. But she shall watch it when I believe she will enjoy it.

Funny thing with the U/PG ratings is that although DD has seen a few PG films (namely Studio Ghibli films) she has yet to watch The Last Unicorn even though it is a U.

IMO The Last Unicorn is absolutely wonderfully surreal but also quite disturbing in parts...even moreso than Coraline.

But I think that the best thing about movies like Coraline, TNBC, Labyrinth, The Last Unicorn, even Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Neverending Story is that it was fun to be scared as a child through weirdness and creativity. I think that it is perfectly normal to want to watch and be fascinated in things that are fantasy and surreal and therefore unnatural and scary.

But hey maybe that was just me growning up, I hadn't seen Grease until I was into my twenties (every female I knew at this point was horrified that I hadn't seen it..seems to be a rite of passage to see it whilst you are pubescent) but I had watched Little Shop of Horrors, anything with Tim Curry in it (especially The Worst Witch), Beetlejuice, The Addams Family, Labyrinth, Jason & the Argonauts and so on and so forth by the time I hit my teens.

I guess I just love being weirded out by the strange and the unusual (Because I too am strange and unusual )