The Boxtrolls
The Boxtrolls
It’s always nice when a film anticipates a viewer’s nagging questions and nitpicks. In The Boxtrolls, a boy is raised from infancy to something like 12 by a group of underground dwellers whose only speech consists of clicks, squeals and grunts, like a sports fan after one too many bevvies. So how is it that when he meets humans he can also speak their language?
Fortunately, someone in the movie asks this very question of the boy. His answer, in a tone that combines embarrassment and sanctimony: “I have a speech impediment!”
Chalk one up for the filmmakers, who clearly had time to foresee some of these troublesome queries, in between moving their rubber and silicone puppets a fraction of an inch for each frame. There was also time to create some clever sight gags and wordplay, including one street-sign groaner that puts the pun in steampunk.
The story takes place in Cheesebridge, a Victorian British town in which the ruling class (not unlike Aardman Animation’s Wallace, and certain Monty Python characters) is obsessed with coagulated milk protein. Lord Portley-Rind (Jared Harris) is particularly preoccupied with the stuff, thus leaving his daughter Winnifred (Elle Fanning) free to daydream about Boxtrolls, which live under the city streets and are widely assumed to be the root of all evil.
The Boxtrolls, we soon learn, are nothing of the sort. They are merely goofy-looking monsters who like to steal odd bits of technology to kit out their lair. (Fun fact: The metal-roller conveyor belt that leads to their home was inspired by the ones in Ontario beer stores.) Their name comes from the fact that they wear empty cardboard boxes, which double as hiding places and triple as a spot to sleep; nestled together at night, the colony resembles a huge beige Rubik’s Cube.
The odd man in their midst is Eggs (Isaac Hempstead Wright, with an accent to match). In a bit of backstory too convoluted to relate here, he’s a human who’s been brought up by Boxtrolls as one of their own.
The creatures have never been welcome, but now they are facing a new threat from Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley), who is capturing them for his own nefarious ends. Snatcher is aided by Pickles
The film is stunning to look at, with tiny details as far as the eye can see
and Trout (Richard Ayoade, Nick Frost), who are conflicted about their roles as henchmen, and by Gristle (Tracy Morgan), who is anything but.
The Boxtrolls is made by Laika Entertainment, or “the company that brought you Coraline and ParaNorman,” as it wants to be known. One of the film’s directors, Graham Annable, worked on both those films. Co-director Anthony Stacchi has a grabbag of credits, including co- directing 2006’s Open Season. The Boxtrolls is loosely based on Here Be Monsters!, an illustrated novel by Alan Snow.
It also might be the best feature yet from the animation company. The film is stunning to look at, with tiny details as far as the eye can see, which in 3D is quite a distance. And while some of the plot twists can be seen coming from just as far — you don’t unveil a giant cheese wheel without it rolling away at some point — there were others, including an unveiling of another sort, that took me quite by surprise.
Adults won’t be bored, and kids will enjoy the lively action scenes, including a chase through a dance hall that apparently took more person hours to construct than the great pyramids. And do stay for the closing credits, in which two of the characters ruminate on the philosophy of stop motion, while the filmmakers provide a cheeky tip of the hat to the animators who made it all possible. They deserve it. ΣΣΣ½