ParaNorman

Nice animated flick, but it had a lot more potential. I liked the handful of horror references, though. (12/14/2012)

You may well ask me what I liked about ParaNorman. I kind of liked the atmosphere and the line "you're gonna love my boyfriend" at the end; I laughed at that. The rest of it seemed contradictory; it tried to be melancholic for a while, then a horror mood struck, and then it was all sweet and pathetic to the point of being really quite embarrassing. It had some good moments, ideas worth appreciating, like when they find out that the scariest thing in the world is an "angry mob". In addition, the girl who was setting herself on fire and throwing a pink stuffed animal crushed it. Oh, and then it had those sickly-sweet moments that destroyed most of my positive feelings, so I was down in the dumps. For example, all it took was for the aforementioned little girl to give the zombie his hand back afterward, and suddenly I stopped seeing the appeal of this movie. Sure it is aimed at kids, and they probably would not be able to handle anything stronger or deeper, so that is perhaps the reason for that particular ending. However, I did not find it very impressive or delightful. So I am sorry, but I am only going to award it 6/10 for the expressive roller coaster ride, which does not have such a great ending. (01/01/2017)

Very funny and sweet, very scary and at the same time a very sad cartoon. An unusual combination? Absolutely. But that made me like ParaNorman all the more. There is more originality than meets the eye, and the message it wants to convey is far from just for children. And the visual ideas - I wish average feature films (not just horror films) had at least a third of them! (03/16/2014)