Coraline 2D

We saw Coraline the other day, and for some reason I was not enchanted. (My reaction to the book was enchantment from Page One, or thereabouts.)

I spent the entire film admiring the movie's technical achievements, but I was never caught up in the action, and the odd thing is that I can't figure out why I wasn't caught up. Usually I can tell why a film doesn't work for me, but this time I can't work it out.

Possibly it's because the film was a 3D film, and our local theater doesn't have the technology, so we saw it in 2D. A lot of the film's scenes were built around the 3d concept.

But still, 3D's only a gimmick. It's not like I really missed anything. The strength of the film should be in the script, and so far as I can tell the script was fine.

I was also aware that the music really wasn't enhancing the film's action. As music it was complex and interesting, as a film score it was second-rate Danny Elfman.

But I've enjoyed films with distracting scores before. What went wrong here?