I’d get sick of the dead. Yes, I’m quite sure I would. Hey, how are ya? You dead, too? That’s great. Just gonna hang on that lamppost for eternity, are ya? Well, lemme know how that works out.
Nondescript Norman (voice of Kodi Smit-McPhee) can speak with the dead. Good for him. He watches horror films with grandma, who passed some time ago. Unfortunately, grandma looks and behaves exactly as she did when she died, wrinkles, hearing loss, mild Alzheimer’s … pretty good argument for dying young, I think. Norman does little more than hang out with the dead as the writers forgot to animate a personality to go with his standing hairdo.
Norman’s excessive milquetoastiness is welcomed by the dead, but shunned by the living. Well, the excuse is that Norman is weird, but really … wouldn’t a kid who can talk to the dead be kinda useful? I’d totally keep one as a friend. Think of all the secrets you could know, huh? It’s clear to me that Not-so-stormin’-Norman is his own worst enemy. If you just make an effort … Seriously, there are a few parts in which Norman is not only seeing things that others don’t, but reacting madly
to them as well. I liked this angle of ParaNorman – does the kid see reality, or is he just insane?
Perhaps it’s just too hard to animate insanity. So, taking for granted Norman isn’t cuckoo, his newly dead sleazy uncle urges him to read a bedtime story to a dead girl. Yes, this is the plot. Oh, and it includes his loser fat-kid friend Neil (Tucker Albrizzi) – because the Diary of a Wimpy Kid blueprint is genius! – and then we get some action. Saying the right thing in the wrong place actually makes pilgrims rise from the grave. I’m pretty sure undead reawakening is a sin in the Puritan handbook; these guys musta made lousy pilgrims.
ParaNorman isn’t exactly scary, or exciting, or insightful, or funny, or anything one might wish to go to the movies for. But it did have one hilarious scene in which NormDad is forced to chauffer a zombie pilgrim about town. Worth the price of admission? No. Worth a rental? Probably.
Kid sees the dead, but as yet no Bruno.
As macabre toons go, this ain’t numero uno.
Have we mistakenly promoted this yarn of witch?
Must be the season of the glitch.
Rated PG, 93 Minutes
D: Chris Butler, Sam Fell
W: Chris Butler
Genre: Um … child horror?
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: The unresolved dead
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Salem apologists
