CAST: KodiSmit-McPhee,Tucker Albrizzi, Anna Kendrick, Casey Affleck, John Goodman, Leslie Mann, Jeff Garlin, JodelleFerland, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Elaine Stritch DIRECTOR:Sam Fell, Cris Butler SCREENWRITER:Cris Butler PRODUCER:
Travis Knight, Arianne Sutner
EDITOR:
Christopher
Murrie MUSICAL
DIRECTOR: Jon Brion GENRE: Action & Adventure, Animation, Kids & Family,Comedy RUNNING TIME: 92minutes CINEMATOGRAPHER: Tristan Oliver
DISTRIBUTOR: Focus
Features LOCATION: USA
Technical: 3
Moral: 3
CINEMA rating: V 14
Eleven-year-old
Norman Babcock (voice of Kodi Smith-McPhee) can communicate with the dead. For him, his dead grandmother (voiced by
Elaine Stritch) is still alive, as she still hangs around the family house and
talks to Norman as though she never left home.
His parents are worried that his behavior indicates that he can’t as yet
cope with the loss of his grandma, but Norman is convinced otherwise. In fact, Norman is so at home with ghosts,
that on the way to school each day, he greets dead people he never even met in
life—and sometimes dead birds and animals, too, like a raccoon run over by a
motorist. This makes him a weird kid,
shunned, teased and bullied by schoolmates, except by one, another reject named
Neil (voiced by Tucker Albrizzi) who will be part of the adventure awaiting
Norman when the latter finds out from his oddball great uncle Mr. Prenderghast
(voiced by John Goodman) that he has been chosen to save their zombie-infested
hometown, Blithe Hollow, from the curse of an 18th century witch.
Why
is it that any movie town that has witches and ghosts and ogres in it must have
“Hollow” as a second name? Is it because
Hollow smacks of Halloween? That gives
you a clue to the nature of ghoulish entertainment ParaNorman offers its audience.
So many ghost movies have been made that it’s hard to think anyone can
still come up with something new to startle audiences. In this sense, ParaNorman’s supposed shockers fail to shock—though it’s more
likely we’ve been desensitized by seeing too many horror movies. Be that as it may, there will always be youngsters
who’ll shriek at a ghostly surprise—as those we encountered in the mall theater
we watched at. Perhaps movie critics
grow old and blasé but there will always be new moviegoers to terrorize. One thing about the animation: the ugly
zombies become uglier and duller due to the 3D; that might as well stand for
Dark, Dim and Dreary, not worth the price of admission. They should have made the zombies out of
glow-in-the-dark stuff—at least they’ll look exciting.
There
are definitely positive elements in ParaNorman,
like Norman’s grace under bully pressure, a sign that the boy is really brave, accepting,
and self-confident inside. His calmness
in the presence of ghosts or his family’s incredulity is also another admirable
trait; after all, how many 11-year olds do you know can deal with the living
dead without flinching? ParaNorman is a statement about
intolerance, claiming that evil deeds (unjustly condemning and burning a
suspected witch at the stake) result from fear and inspire vengeance. It is also a plea made on behalf of children
to be heard by parents and elders alike, no matter how “different” the child
is, because being different can also give a person the power to do good for
others.
One
dangerous side of ParaNorman,
particularly since it is directed at children, is its casual treatment of
homosexuality. A brief and apparently
humorous scene shows a muscular man, all that time presented as a he-man, later
on matter-of-factly saying he has a boyfriend.
Is that supposed to signal to the audience that same sex relationships
ought to be accepted as natural and normal?
Beware that youngsters do not get subtly brainwashed by seemingly
harmless incidents in movies into accepting errant behaviors that could lead to
self-destruction or defilement in the light of the gospel.
