Animated box of dark delights
BEAUTIFULLY textured and eccentric in the extreme, this stop animation gem follows a very simply storyline, but the steam punk satire on Classism works for kids and adults.
The film takes its cue from the children’s novel Here be Monsters by Alan Snow, which is a wonderfully inventive story worth investigating, filled with even more than Laika Entertainment’s ( Paranorman, Coraline) film can accommodate.
The town of Ratbridge becomes Cheesebridge in the film – a sort of a post-Victorian looking alternative reality town on a hill – and simplifies a lot of the detail. Here, in the film, the people are obsessed with wealth and class and trying desperately to protect their children and cheese from the monsters that dwell below.
Only thing is, the Boxtrolls living in caves underneath the town aren’t so much eugh as awe-shucks cute, it is just that most of the townspeople have never seen them. The Boxtrolls are shy, mechanically inclined, mischievous and masters of recycling. They live off whatever the humans put out in the trash, or leave unattended.
Young Eggs (voiced by Isaac Hempstead Wright) is a human boy who is raised underground by the Boxtrolls. He is trying to save his friends from the evil Exterminator, the unctuous Archibald Snatcher (Kingsley), who has been contracted by Lord Portley-Rind (Harris) to get rid of the monsters that prey on the children and cheese. Specifically, Eggs wants to save the Boxtroll he sees as his father, Fish (Baker).
Egg’s practical, helpful and open nature is in contrast to that of Lord Portley-Rind’s daughter, feisty Winnie (Elle Fanning), who is very obsessed with the macabre, a rather lonely little girl with her own Daddy issues.
Snatcher’s henchman, messieurs Trout (Frost), Pickle (Ayoade) and Gristle (Morgan) are straight out of Terry Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork, especially when they start spouting pseudo-philosophical discussions about the nature of good and evil and the crazy end credits are some of the best you are going to see this year.
Kingsley’s voicework as the bad guy, Snatcher, is deliciously scary and his alter ego of Madame Frou-Frou is disturbing. It is Dame Edna, but nowhere near as nice.
While the scriptwriters went dark, they didn’t exactly go complex – there’s lots of slapstick humour to offset scary imagery of baby abductions and the deceitful aspect of the humans.
The sinister nature of gossip and how it overtakes good sense is ably demonstrated, as the story asks, just who are the real monsters: the trolls who look after the vulnerable child, or the destructive humans hellbent on maintaining their status and behaving in the correct, prescribed manner?
Kids will love the spooky, scary imagery and grasp the lessons about recycling and the meaning of family and especially fathers, while adults will lap up the quirky wit and sly pokes at gender stereotypes, identity and class hierarchy.
Strange angles that make you think of pop-up books, eccentric characters, fabulously detailed clothing, sly wit – it’s like Roald Dahl, Tim Burton and Charles Dickens mainlined cheese at the Mad Hatter’s tea table. Intricate and inventive contraptions underground and skewed perspectives above ground create a layered depth of field where there is always something happening.
It’s the old-fashioned idea of stop animation and handcrafted puppets meets 3D computer-aided cinematography in a pleasing fashion – there’s so much happening, and it all looks so good, multiple viewings will not be a pain.
If you liked Coraline or Paranorman, you will like this.