Coraline -- a mild dissent

I just returned from seeing the movie "Coraline", which has been hailed far and wide as a cool, creep children's fable for the new century. I even saw it in a cheap-ass theatre which didn't have any 3D glasses, so I missed those effects, and I liked it well enough.

A few things struck me, though, and I'm not sure that other critics have so pointedly mentioned this. (caution, spoilers ahead). One, at the point our plucky heroine gets a clue and returns to the dark parallel world of button-eyed delights to rescue her parents and the souls of three trapped children. And suddenly, we're watching the narrative of a video game. Coraline suits up with a bag full of tools such as garden shears, as well as a magical ring of sorts given to her by the crazy divas downstairs, and returns to negotiate the terms of 'a game' with the evil Parallel Mom.

And then it becomes even more like a video game. Coraline is tasked with finding three orbs which hold the souls of the lost children. "Give me a clue", she asks Parallel Mom, which she does. The garden shears come in handy in battling overly aggressive lilies; looking through 'the ring' allows the viewer to see the orbs in sharp relief. Coraline deftly collects them all with the help of a great cat. Did I mention there was a time limit? Each success leads to the world around her unraveling a little bit more. Freeing her real parents seemed more like an afterthought. The game element was, to me, a bit of a drag.

Two, she throws the wise cat at the crazed, evil mother in order to make her escape. That's the thanks he gets for saving her butt several times over earlier.

Three, I found it funny that in this supposedly interactive world we live in, where a child's self-actualization comes from creating, Coraline's dream is to passively suck down cupcakes and baked chicken, and to take in fabulous entertainments.

Four, what kind of man writes a story about a crazed mother whose heartfelt desire is to love a child? And my companion at the movies took one look at that squishy tunnel to the otherworld and said, "Vagina." Female issues, anyone? A victim of inappropriate (s)mothering? And was it me, or did the evil version of Mom look a bit like Joan Crawford?

Thank goodness no one reads this blog. But can I make a call for more female mainstream reviewers already? and writers?