ParaNorman

Film: ParaNorman
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

A couple of weeks ago, I ran a poll here to determine what new category of Oscar films I should add to the blog list. Best Animated Feature won in a close race, which turned out to be something of a relief—a few of those categories were pretty large. In the interests of getting things started, though, I figured I’d knock out ParaNorman, a recent film from Laika. I expected a pretty standard “scary” kids’ movie, which is not at all what I got.

Norman Babcock (Kodi Smit-McPhee) can see dead people. He can also talk to them. Since he’s the only person around who can do that, it’s no surprise that he is constantly bullied and harassed at school. It’s a little more of a shock that he’s bullied at home by his father (Jeff Garlin) and his sister Courtney (Anna Kendrick). His mother (Leslie Mann) is more sympathetic but still doesn’t much understand him, which makes his real support network the ghost of his dead grandmother (Elaine Stritch).