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ParaNorman Movie Review

ParaNorman is a 2012 animated fantasy horror film directed by Chris Butler and starring Kodi Smit-McPhee. It’s one of Laika’s best efforts.

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“You know, you’re gonna love my boyfriend.

He’s like a total chick-flick nut“

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Norman, a young boy who can communicate with ghosts, is given the task of ending a 300 year-old witch’s curse on his Massachusetts town, despite hibernating as his uncle said. I am not the biggest fan of zombies, but this is surely one of the better films about these uninspired creatures because it’s much more emotional and mature than expected.

The movies touches upon mob mentality, outcasts and in particular bullying in schools as that final dialogue exchange is beautiful, mature and it’s easily the highlight of the movie. But I also really liked the teen comedy angles to the film as they were a lot of fun, though not being incorporated well into the horror part of the story which is strong, but it’s never as truly creepy as ‘Coraline’ was.

The film offers a plethora of well-developed, colorful characters. Norman is your typical outcast protagonist, though his darker edge makes him more unique. Of course, the ghost girl is a phenomenal, very tragic character. Neil is a regular fat sidekick, but he’s quite funny, and the friendship that develops between the two is wonderful. Courtney is an excellent sister character, and she turned out to be a great supporter of her brother’s near the end, which I loved.

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I found her amorously chasing Mitch throughout the movie hilarious, especially given how it ended. Yes, that twist that he is gay and has a boyfriend is downright iconic by now. It was the first ever openly gay character case in a major US animated movie, and it was wonderfully handled. It’s not only a hilarious twist, but it enriched the character and it never portrayed him as a stereotype, which is also commendable. I also really liked Norman’s granny, though his relationship with his father definitely should have been accentuated more.

ParaNorman features tremendous animation. It’s smooth throughout while consistently being gorgeous to watch without ever being too garish. The color palette is suitably darker, but still immensely appealing with the green, dark blue and black colors being stupendously used. The character designs are uniformly great with the ghost zombies being particularly terrific.

I also found its score pretty good while the dialogue is mostly stupendous. The pacing, however, isn’t that great as some parts of the film are slower while some are too frenetic. I found the action sequences overwhelming at times and certainly those faster parts of the movie were the least appealing sections to me personally.

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ParaNorman also did not run a smooth plot as its teen comedy and fantasy horror genres clashed way too much instead of coalesced into a coherent whole. But the humor is still very strong, some of the lines being downright hilarious, and the movie can be very moving, even heartbreaking in its third act. It has some regular plot beats in the first half, but still its exploration of bullying and outcasts was far better than most films of this type. It’s not quite Laika’s best movie, but it’s up there among its classics for sure.

ParaNorman is weaker in pacing while its teen comedy and fantasy horror elements did not coalesce particularly well into a coherent whole, but still this is one of Laika’s best efforts due to tremendous, very appealing animation and character designs, a plethora of colorful characters, strong humor and some great themes well explored, in particular bullying was really well handled. The movie is also mature and moving with the third act being particularly touching.