ParaNorman: Review

                           (image courtesy of rottentomatoes.com)

I went to see ParaNorman in 3D with a group of friends last Sunday. Here is my review:

I really liked it! The look of the film and the execution of the animation was superb, the story was interesting and the characters were fun and entertaining. The design work on the film was really spectacular, I love how there’s an apparent lack of symmetry in everything including the character’s faces, it really helps enhance the creepy-cool feel of the whole flick. The attention to detail that the people at Laika put into the construction of the film just blew me away, like the sub-surface scattering on Norman’s ears and the look of his sister’s lip gloss.

There was some really interesting stuff going on as far as cinematography as well, like close-up shots of feet walking (something that is almost never done in stop motion) and the shot where the parents are arguing and we only see their stomachs and Norman’s head, it was something I’d never seen before. And I really liked the scenes at the end during the confrontation with the witch, the visual effects meshed really well with the stop motion and just looked really cool.

The only thing I didn’t love about the movie was the 3D; it was very inconsistent. Some shots looked really good with nice roundness on the characters and a nice sense of scale and other shots looked totally flat and compressed. There were a few instances when I thought maybe the 3D projector had stopped working correctly because there were a few scenes that seemed to have no depth at all.

So maybe it’s not worth the price for the 3D ticket, but I would definitely recommend seeing it in 2D while it’s still in theaters.