Coraline

That's Coraline, pronounced 'Caw-a-lyne'. Not Caroline. Or Carolyn. Seems the only people to get that right are Coraline's mum and dad. All four of them. Four? Well, after her family moves into the gothic 'Pink Palaces Apartments' in Oregon, Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) discovers a parallel dimension, accessed through a tiny door in reception.

There she discovers a spellbinding, candy-coloured mirror world, in which parents mark II are never too busy to play with her. They prepare dinner tables laden with mouthwatering roasts (and a literal gravy train) and compose songs (They Might Be Giants-penned songs but, really, you can't have everything) on magic pianos, dedicated to the very ground on which Coraline walks. The kind of stuff her workaholic, self-absorbed real-world parents have neither the time nor inclination for. "Rain makes mud, mud makes a mess" Mom no. 1 (Teri Hatcher) snaps when Coraline wants to go out and splash around. Conversely, Other Mom (also Teri Hatcher) just adores mud, glorious mud. "Mud facials, mud baths, mud pies...!"

Oh yes, the perfect parents in every way. Well, okay, there are the buttons. You're looking at the buttons, right. The black buttons Mom and Dad 2.0 have in place of their eyes. Maybe it is a bit yucky. Only now, Other Mom's insisting that Coraline has the same operation. And when she resists, things suddenly turn very nasty. As that mysterious talking cat (Keith David) warned her all along, "You probably think this is a dream come true - but you're wrong." And when Mom No.2 transforms into the awful spider-hag we guessed she was all along, Coraline must get herself, her real parents and some other trapped souls the heck out of this poisoned domain, before her eyes get poked out with sewing needles. Button Moon it ain't.

This reviewer bows to nobody in their admiration for the works of Neil Gaiman, from the 'Sandman' saga to 'Stardust'. Though some may quibble that Coraline hasn't an original bone in its body - referencing everything from The Wizard Of Oz to Snow White's witch-queen and Alice's enchanted gardens (along with many elements from Gaiman's own Sandman novels) - there's only a handful of plots in this world, and the wise ones know it's all in the telling.

As a weaver of myths and spinner of stories, then, Gaiman is at the top of his game, man. Director Henry Selick isn't exactly a slouch either when it comes to fashioning astounding vistas. Contrary to popular belief (and its, er, title) Tim Burton didn't actually direct Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas - it was Selick; another ex-Disney animator like Burton, and the chap behind the James and the Giant Peach adaptation.

As expected - but even exceeding expectations - Coraline, the longest stop-animation feature to date, and the first to be shot in 3D, is technically brilliant. From the minute curl of an eyebrow to the sheen of dust on a window, the gilding and frosting is unprecedented. If the set-pieces (including that enchanted garden with its snapping snapdragons and praying mantis tractor) overwhelm with their ingenuity, the sideshows featuring Coraline's bizarre neighbours are hardly less impressive: a phantasmagorical big top of circus mice; a bawdy burlesque voiced by our own French and Saunders, featuring lithe young trapezists bursting through the skins of old ladies with bosoms like gas balloons, for an audience of flying Scottie dogs wearing harnesses of angels wings. It's a stream of consciousness turned loopy, feral and dangerous.

And Coraline is terrifying. Unlike, say, WALL-E, which also springs from an essentially depressing set-up, this film isn't interested in charming your socks off. Like its eponymous heroine, it knows exactly who it is, and if you don't care for it, you can go to blazes. Or Hannah Montana: The Movie. Coraline has no warmth, no charm, no cheer - and it likes it like that. Its primary purpose is to make you crawl under a popcorn box, or tickle the same part of the brain that likes tiptoeing down the creaky cellar stairs - then bolting up the same.

Why? Because kids can't get enough of it. Because, in the face of all currently received wisdom and advice - the kind of stultifying over-cautiousness that led to the likes of March Of The Penguins being saddled with a 'mild peril' warning - kids love 'icky stuff' and they love being scared out of their wits. (The novella, incidentally, is even creepier than this.) As Gaiman argues, and everyone from Angela Carter to the Brothers Grimm would surely agree with him, this is healthy stuff, an important part of a child's development.

Much less healthy, in fact, is the presence of local boy Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr), short for "Why Be Born?" of all the lovely things - a totally unnecessary addition to the source. In the original, Coraline calls on every ounce of her own courage and initiative to defeat the button-eyed 'Beldam'. Here, it's the otherwise entirely useless Wybie who saves the day, as if a mere girl couldn't be trusted to be self-sufficient. It all seems horribly representative of an increasingly reactionary, anti-feminist stance in American-made dramas, and which now appears to have extended its pernicious reach to family cartoons.

The much-vaunted 3D is similarly problematic. Coraline's palate is vivacious and bright, but those dull grey glasses automatically cast a pall over proceedings, rendering clear scenes gloomy and muddy: a truly crackpot interference. Sure, it's meant to be dark, but not like this. The technology isn't nearly exploited enough anyway: after a tease of an opener in which sewing needles are perilously thrust towards the eyes, it consequently drops in and out, so that you might find yourself constantly taking the glasses off and on to get the most out of the picture. To be continually reminded of a technical process is not exactly ideal for such a supposedly immersive feature. But perhaps it should have dispensed with it altogether; Coraline's world is audacious enough on its own terms without further feathers and bells and whistles.

So, anyway, kids of all ages - enjoy. Kind of. Just don't expect to be cuddled.