Dark, magical and endlessly inventive, “Coraline” is the latest stop-motion animated marvel from Henry Selick. Selick’s stop-motion films are generally viewed as being the genre’s gold standard, especially “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” — Burton, who produced the movie and created its story (though not its screenplay), is typically and inaccurately given sole credit for its brilliance — and “James and the Giant Peach.”

Where most of today’s animated films are like video games — snappy, slick computer-assisted/photo-realistic wonders designed for the ADD set — Selick is still playing with toy trains, telling quiet, funny and sometimes disturbing tales for kids using dolls, hand-built miniature sets and great voice actors.

There’s a little digital artifice here and there, but the most magical aspect of Selick’s movies is their unmatched tactile sense of reality. And if you see the 3D version of the film, then you’ll appreciate the tangible presence of his creations even more.

“Coraline,” based on a story by novelist and comic book writer Neil Gaiman (the 2007 fantasy film “Stardust” is an adaptation of one of his books) is about a girl who looks to be about 11, an only child who has moved to a remote boarding house with her freelance writer/editor parents. The adults slave away over a gardening catalog they produce, too busy to give Coraline (Dakota Fanning) a moment’s thought, or cook her a decent meal.

The kid entertains herself. She has to. There’s not much a girl can do with the pot-bellied trapeze artist (voiced by Ian McShane) upstairs or the plump, bawdy and doddering burlesque dancers (Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French) in the basement.

There’s a mysterious door in the wall that gets Coraline’s attention. When she opens it, she wanders into her “other” life with her “better” parents, a mom (Teri Hatcher) who cooks wondrous meals and dotes on her, and a father who whips off ditties about his Coraline on his piano. Coraline may wake up in the dreary, dull “real” world. At night, however, she can slip off to her own personal Oz where the colors are Van Gogh splashy, the flowers are playful and that stray cat who wanders through both worlds now speaks with the warning growl of Keith David.

“You probably think this other world is a dream come true,” the cat cautions. “But you’re wrong.”

For one thing, all the alternate people have buttons for eyes.

Coraline must not let her real eyes be fooled by the promise of a shiny, idyllic life in button-eye land and awaken to the menace packed in her other mother’s iron-fisted rule over this alternate reality.

The voices, especially a vamping Russian-accented McShane and the British comedy duo of French and Saunders, re-united for this film, are simply perfect. Fanning was recorded in the last blush of adolescence.

Selick stages the third act’s chases and monstrous 3D menace (this may be too much for anybody under 5) with style and wit.

It’s the pacing and look of “Coraline,” however, its ramble through a lovingly realized model-maker’s paradise, that makes the film stand out. A VW Beetle shown here even has a perfectly smudged windshield. For all the polished electrons of the latest works from Pixar, Blue Sky or Dreamworks, Selick and his collaborators show that stop-motion animation still looks, moves and feels like nothing a computer can mimic.

A

‘Coraline’

Director: Henry Selick

Cast: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Ian McShane, Keith David

Running time: 1 hr., 40 min.

Rating: PG for thematic elements, scary images, some language and suggestive humor

Location: Opens Friday at theaters everywhere