Directors: Chris Butler, Sam Fell
Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tucker Albrizzi, Anna Kendrick, Casey Affleck
My Rating: Loved It!!
Budget: $60 Million
Box Office: $107 Million (according to wikipedia)
ParaNorman is not your average animated movie. It's more an entertaining horror/comedy, brilliantly put into the box of a children's movie. The film caters more to adults than kids, which is rare for a PG movie.
Norman can see and communicate with the ghosts of dead people. And sometimes he has these strange visions, which completely take him out of his body and to another place in his head entirely. Now do you see what I mean when I say it's more adult oriented? Since Norman has this ability, he is the only one who can solve the problem that is happening in his town. Even though there are obvious themes of death and weird head trips into the protagonist's mind, ParaNorman still has a very light hearted nature.
The story is great, but what makes this movie is the art direction. ParaNorman is gorgeously realized. I can't think of too many stop motion animation films that I've seen, but ParaNorman has to be one of the best stop-motion projects of all time. And it all amps up to an amazingly colorful and creative climax that you really need to see for yourself. Even though the movie isn't necessarily "scary," ParaNorman is a horror movie through and through, and a very good one at that. I don't say this about very many animated movies, but honestly, I consider ParaNorman a masterpiece