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A hapless young Viking who aspires to hunt dragons becomes the unlikely friend of a young dragon himself, and learns there may be more to the creatures than he assumed.
Directors:
Dean DeBlois,
Chris Sanders
Stars:
Jay Baruchel,
Gerard Butler,
Craig Ferguson
Monsters generate their city's power by scaring children, but they are terribly afraid themselves of being contaminated by children, so when one enters Monstropolis, top scarer Sulley finds his world disrupted.
By tying thousands of balloons to his home, 78-year-old Carl sets out to fulfill his lifelong dream to see the wilds of South America. Russell, a wilderness explorer 70 years younger, inadvertently becomes a stowaway.
Directors:
Pete Docter,
Bob Peterson
Stars:
Edward Asner,
Christopher Plummer,
Jordan Nagai
Rumpelstiltskin tricks a mid-life crisis burdened Shrek into allowing himself to be erased from existence and cast in a dark alternate timeline where Rumpel rules supreme.
A shy student trying to reach his family in Ohio, and a gun-toting tough guy trying to find the Last Twinkie and a pair of sisters trying to get to an amusement park join forces to travel across a zombie-filled America.
Director:
Ruben Fleischer
Stars:
Jesse Eisenberg,
Woody Harrelson,
Emma Stone
The tale of three unlikely heroes - a misfit mouse who prefers reading books to eating them, an unhappy rat who schemes to leave the darkness of the dungeon, and a bumbling servant girl with cauliflower ears - whose fates are intertwined with that of the castle's princess.
Directors:
Sam Fell,
Robert Stevenhagen
Stars:
Matthew Broderick,
Dustin Hoffman,
Emma Watson
On a journey to find the cure for a Tatarigami's curse, Ashitaka finds himself in the middle of a war between the forest gods and Tatara, a mining colony. In this quest he also meets San, the Mononoke Hime.
In the town of Blithe Hollow, Norman Babcock is a boy who can speak to the dead, but no one besides his eccentric new friend, Neil, believes his ability is real. One day, Norman's estranged eccentric uncle tells him of an important annual ritual he must take up to protect the town from a curse cast by a witch it condemned centuries ago. Eventually, Norman decides to cooperate, but things don't go according to plan. Now, a magic storm of the witch threatens Blithe Hollow as the accursed dead rise. Together with unexpected new companions, Norman struggles to save his town, only to discover the horrific truth of the curse. With that insight, Norman must resolve the crisis for good as only he can. Written by
Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)
The story is set in the town of Blithe Hollow, whose name is a mash-up of two other ghost stories: Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit and Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. See more »
Goofs
Mrs. Henscher witnesses the zombies entering the town hall through a side door, yet doesn't lead the angry mob in that way to get them. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Movie Zombie:
Grrr. Brains!
Grandma:
What's happening now?
Norman Babcock:
Well, the zombie is eating her head, Grandma.
Grandma:
That's not very nice. What's he doing that for?
Norman Babcock:
[chuckles]
Because he's a zombie. That's what they do.
Grandma:
He's gonna ruin his dinner. I'm sure if they just bothered to sit down and talk it through, it would be a different story.
See more »
Crazy Credits
After the credits, a short featurette shows a time-lapse video of the creation and modeling of the Norman figure used for filming. See more »
Why is Laika, the studio that has made Coraline and now ParaNorman, "Stop-motion's Pixar" ? Because after Coraline's perfect trip through fear and loneliness, it is time for Norman to impress us all !
Just like in Coraline, the stop-motion animation is gorgeous and dazzling. The characters are all beautifully animated and everything feels alive, unlike CGI movies that sometimes may look cold (I'm especially thinking about Dreamworks movies).
The story of ParaNorman seemed a bit like a great-fun tribute to cheesy B-movies with funny characters. Well, it is by far better than this. The characters are deeper than I expected. And the last 30 minutes are incredibly surprising, thanks to a well-made twist unrevealed in trailers (which is really unusual nowadays) that leads to a fantastic, poetic and even sad climax. I'd say the final fight is the best of the year, by far.
To sum up, ParaNorman is a poetic, sometimes frightening and funny animation movie that everybody has to watch. It is at least as good as Pixar's best films, and I'm already waiting for the day ParaNorman will win an Oscar.
21 of 36 people found this review helpful.
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Why is Laika, the studio that has made Coraline and now ParaNorman, "Stop-motion's Pixar" ? Because after Coraline's perfect trip through fear and loneliness, it is time for Norman to impress us all !
Just like in Coraline, the stop-motion animation is gorgeous and dazzling. The characters are all beautifully animated and everything feels alive, unlike CGI movies that sometimes may look cold (I'm especially thinking about Dreamworks movies).
The story of ParaNorman seemed a bit like a great-fun tribute to cheesy B-movies with funny characters. Well, it is by far better than this. The characters are deeper than I expected. And the last 30 minutes are incredibly surprising, thanks to a well-made twist unrevealed in trailers (which is really unusual nowadays) that leads to a fantastic, poetic and even sad climax. I'd say the final fight is the best of the year, by far.
To sum up, ParaNorman is a poetic, sometimes frightening and funny animation movie that everybody has to watch. It is at least as good as Pixar's best films, and I'm already waiting for the day ParaNorman will win an Oscar.