Taken To See Coraline

If you had come up to me before I saw the movie Taken and said, “Jon, you thoroughly enjoy watching Liam Neeson beat the living snot out of people with ruthless efficiency,” I would have had two reactions.
The first reaction would have been something like, “Who are you? What are you talking about? And why aren’t you wearing any pants?”
My second reaction would have been, “Yeah, that sounds like me. You’re probably right.”
However, I wouldn’t have known it to be true in the way that I do now that I’ve seen the movie. Liam Neeson beating the living snot out of people with ruthless efficiency is completely awesome.
If Taken had nothing else going for it – and it had plenty – that fact alone would have made the movie amazing for me.
I’m not going to write up a full review, but I will say that if you even suspect that you would thoroughly enjoy watching Liam Neeson beat the living snot out of people with ruthless efficiency, Taken is the movie for you.
I’m also not going to write up a review of Coraline, but I will say that, while it did not feature Liam Neeson beating the living snot out of people with ruthless efficiency, I thoroughly enjoyed it as well.
I pretty much have no complaints about it. The stop motion animation was amazing, as were the set and character designs. All of the voice actors did great jobs – even Teri Hatcher, who seems to be easier to take when you don’t actually see her and her goofiness. There’s just no way around it; back in the 90s she was incredibly hot, but she was also incredibly goofy. Now the hotness has faded – time is seldom kind to anyone – but the goofiness has remained.
I do have a couple of minor quibbles, though. For one thing, one of my favorite bits from the book was left out.
The other thing is the attempt that Dakota Fanning, as the voice of Coraline, made at having a “Michigan” accent. Even if they’d been aiming for a Yooper accent – which wouldn’t have made sense, as she was supposed to be from Pontiac – they would have missed the mark. It seems like someone told her to watch Fargo and talk like that, operating on the assumption that everyone in the Midwest talks like that.
Honestly, if I didn’t know that production was pretty much complete long before she came to national prominence, I would think that her accent was modeled after Sarah Palin.
Still, it’s a minor quibble.
After our double feature Scott and I had a late dinner at a nearby Chipotle. I haven’t eaten at/from Chipotle since I worked at AOL, so I was very eager to take advantage of the opportunity.
The one problem with that, though, is that it’s been so long that I’d forgotten what I like. It wasn’t until after I’d already had it made and paid for that I remembered that I did, in fact, like sour cream on my burrito – it merges with the rice to give it a really satisfying texture – and that while I do like the corn salsa, what I really like is the green tomatillo salsa.
Oh well, it was still good.
Anyway, I’ve already written more than I would have thought my laziness would allow, so I guess that’ll do it for this entry.