Runtime: 1 hour, 37 minutes
Rating: PG
Director: Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi
Quick Impressions:
We’re big fans of stop-motion animation at our house. I mean, how can anyone not be impressed by stop-motion? The work that goes into each stop-motion feature is staggering!
And when artists dedicate that much time, energy, money, and meticulous crafting to creating thousands of tiny puppets and making us believe that they’re moving, the creative team is unlikely to settle for a lazy, poorly written script. You don’t put in that much work to create a mediocre finished product if you can possibly help it.
The stop-motion classic Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was easily my favorite film of 2005 (a total surprise since we bought tickets only because we had planned to see Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist but accidentally ended up at the wrong theater where it wasn’t playing, an extra happy accident since when I finally did see Polanski’s take on Oliver Twist, I totally hated it).
My husband and I are also big fans of Laika’s two previous stop motion features, Coraline, and (especially) ParaNorman. I’m happy to report that The Boxtrolls is no departure from the studio’s previous work. Three films can’t be a fluke. Laika consistently serves up unusually thoughtful, intensely atmospheric films with sharp writing and a blend of silly and sophisticated humor.
Ostensibly these are children’s movies, but all three of them are genuinely scary (sometimes even terrifying), and they also don’t shy away from showing the ugly side of humanity. (On the contrary, they relish spotlighting the disgusting and the vicious perhaps a little too much.) Though some audiences may find this off putting, I think it’s all rather dark and wonderful, refreshingly non-toothless children’s entertainment. The morals are not exactly subtle, but they are artfully delivered, at least.
Even though our family has been trying to save money by cutting back on big weekend trips to the movies, all four of us really wanted to see The Boxtrolls (and our five-year-old really wanted to show her brother her new favorite movie theater), so we decided a Saturday afternoon matinee couldn’t hurt.
And I’m pleased to say we got our money’s worth. The Boxtrolls is another great movie from Laika and a worthy contender for the Animated Feature Oscar this year.
The Good:
I’ve never read the book Here Be Monsters! by Alan Snow (though my daughter and I liked the movie enough that we might get give it a try), but tonally The Boxtrolls reminded me a lot of a Neil Gaiman novel (specifically Neverwhere).
Laika has consistently excelled at atmosphere, and from the opening scene, The Boxtrolls shows us a gloomy kingdom where high hats and cobblestone peek out at us through the ominous, pervasive fog. Cheesebridge makes a strong impression right away as an atmospheric mash-up of a timeless fairy tale and Victorian London.
The characters all seem terribly familiar, though we’ve never exactly met them before. The voice cast is extremely talented, and the writing is sharp, so the characters grow on us quickly, even (and maybe especially) the horrible ones.
Richard Ayoade and and Nick Frost are particular standouts as the—good guys? evil henchmen?—philosophical Mr. Pickles and companionable Mr. Trout. These two have some of the best (cleverest, funniest, and most thoughtful) lines in the film. Initially, these characters made me think of Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar in Neverwhere, though Pickles and Trout turn out to be a very different breed of henchman. (They’re not nightmarish at all, really. They’ve just made some ill-informed choices.)
Ben Kingsley is just smashing as the nefarious Archibald Snatcher. Some of Snatcher’s more successful moments of evilness may terrify young children, but (as someone who was obsessed with the movie Oliver! as a young child) I found him a wicked delight. (That Snatcher’s “clever disguise” actually fools the most respectable (and not-so-coincidentally oblivious) citizens of Cheesebridge for a decade is another delightful aspect of the story.) Kingsley plays the stereotypical storybook ruthless Cockney villain desperate to improve his social status with such gusto that I never succeeded in placing the actor’s voice until the end credits solved the mystery for me. Making Snatcher come alive is a task of monumental importance since without a commanding performance from him, the movie would fall apart, and the seasoned Kingsley pulls it off with great aplomb. (Kingsley usually gives fantastic performances, and I should mention that my dislike of Polanski’s Oliver Twist had nothing to do with the actor’s work in that film.)
Young Isaac Hempstead Wright (Bran Stark on Game of Thrones) is fantastic as “Boxboy” protagonist Eggs. Elle Fanning is even better as Winifred, the much neglected (and resentful) daughter of the most influential whitehat of Cheesebridge, Lord Portley-Rind. (She has such a hilarious line when she tells the Boxtrolls to go ahead and eat her, hilarious almost entirely because of her pouty delivery.)
Speaking of Lord Portley-Rind, Jed Harris is also perfect in his part. (One of his only contemplative lines, delivered near the end of the final act, made me laugh more than almost anything in the movie.)
Playing a character who has been driven insane, Simon Pegg does little more than shout, “Jelly!” But he shouts “Jelly!” with such charming energy that all his mad “Jelly!” shouting was my stepson’s favorite part of the movie.
Toni Collette has a nice moment in a very small part, and Tracy Morgan surprised me with his low key and sinister performance of Mr. Gristle.
Then we come to the Boxtrolls themselves. Dee Bradley Baker (better known to my family as Perry the Platypus) plays Eggs’s charming Boxtroll protector, Fish (and some of the other Box Trolls, as well). Fish is so sweet, so loyal, so true-hearted, and so cute. In fact, all of the Boxtrolls are adorable, even the frequently grumpy Shoe (Steve Blum).
This brings me to one of the brilliant incongruities of the film. So much of this movie comes across as biting social satire. Though allegedly a faraway kingdom, Cheesebridge with its foggy, cobblestoned streets and abundance of scheming, grandiose, social-climbing Cockney villains seems an awful lot like the corrupt and merciless London of Charles Dickens or William Blake. The town’s leadership, its finest and most respectable citizens, have their heads buried firmly up their cheesewheels, and they parade around uselessly in their empty finery, obliviously drawing the ire of their social “inferiors.” Because of their self-absorbed incompetence and lack of leadership, the entire kingdom is in jeopardy. (Really, Lord Portley-Rind makes Marie Antoinette look like a level-headed champion of the people.) So up above on the streets of Cheesebridge, everything is very dark and grim and satirical and sophisticated and cutting.
But then down below in their underground wonderland, the Boxtrolls are a bunch of tender-hearted little cutie pies whose naïve gurgles and well-intentioned experiments will make toddlers coo and win the hearts of older children immediately. The human world is oh so sophisticated and dark, and meanwhile the Boxtrolls are oh so cutie cute cute!
This is not a bad thing, mind you. I think it’s meant to highlight the artificiality of society, the falseness of entrapping social constructs. Over and over again, Snatcher bellows that you can’t change nature, but what he means is, in society, everyone has his or her proper place, and some people are meant to be better than others. If anything, the movie teaches children to embrace their true nature and see past the ridiculous, oft entrapping trappings of a dysfunctional society. Throughout the film, there’s a pretty sophisticated ongoing debate between a predestined, ordained worldview and the idea that free will and courageous decisions can make a difference. Unhappy with his current station, Snatcher wants to rise in society, but he never considers that rising in society might not be worth it. He hates being disrespected by the town’s elite, and yet he continues to value their opinions. He’s violently allergic to cheese, and yet his monomaniacal goal is to be invited to the cheese tasting room. In some ways, he’s a tragic figure, but, then again, in most ways he’s more of a really evil jerk.
Meanwhile, the Boxtrolls could care less about society with its white hats and cheese-tasting. They just enjoy their lives and spend most of their time taking apart old junk that they find and saving only the good bits and pieces, reassembling them to create useful things that actually work in a beneficial way.
The movie makes some pretty sophisticated philosophical points. And if we’re unable to pick up on them ourselves, we can always rely on helpful Mr. Pickles to punch certain concepts for us again and again.
Also strongly in the movie’s favor is its captivating score. There’s also a delightful, toe-tapping song by Eric Idle that plays in the closing credits. I loved the song immediately, and I hope it gets an Oscar nomination (though that category is always so weird I never feel comfortable predicting it at all).
Best Scene Visually:
The layout of Cheesebridge makes an immediate impression. When we see the kingdom from afar, it’s sharp triangular shape (not unlike a piece of cheese) looks very cool in the frame. We get a view like this in several scenes, but my favorite moment comes when Eggs runs down the hill in his desperate search for the redhats who took Fish.
Best Scene:
When Winnie is taken below and introduced the Boxtrolls, the movie suddenly finds its stride and becomes far more enjoyable than it’s been to that point. When Eggs goes above to be introduced into human society, however, the movie gets better still. His inadvertently atrocious manners at the party are absolutely hilarious.
Another very strong scene is the flashback origin story of Eggs.
Best Action Sequence:
I personally like the dance/chase much better than the big fighting sequence at the end. It’s very compelling with its mad-whirling energy. And its absurdity is divine. Madame Frou Frou is ridiculously grotesque, and yet Lord Portey-Rind can’t see beyond the end of his cheese wheel. (You want to shout, “You wouldn’t know a villain if he dressed in drag and danced circles around your living room!”)
Another unforgettable sequence comes at the very end of the movie when we get to see the accelerated ghost of one of the animators manipulating the tiny puppets as the character in question waxes philosophical, wondering if his entire world is just a tiny stage, and if his every act is actually manipulated by some unseen hand. This not only emphasizes for the audience just how much work goes into a stop-motion production, but it also punches one last time the movie’s preoccupation with the question of free will.
Best Cheesy Joke:
When Eggs and Winifred talk for the first time, the directions she gives him are hilarious (if groan-worthy). As our kids would say, “She’s so punny!”
The Negatives:
Some people’s children are not going to enjoy watching this, and be careful because those children may be yours.
I remember taking my stepson to see Coraline back when he was in kindergarten. Media outlets kept buzzing that Coraline was too scary for children, and I thought, Seriously? It’s directed by Henry Selick who also directed The Nightmare Before Christmas. People complained about that, too, but though it’s macabre, it’s definitely not too scary for kids. I’m sure the media is just overreacting to create a story.
Well, guess what? At moments, Coraline is genuinely terrifying. Neil Gaiman writes wonderful stuff, but even his children’s books don’t shy away from real horror. (Though my daughter loves the whimsical Fortunately, the Milk, she absolutely refused to sit through Gaiman’s creepy picture book Crazy Hair a second time despite my pleas. I was impressed with the book. I kept saying, “Isn’t this delightfully creepy?” And my daughter was like, “We are taking that right back to the library! Now!” Now arguably, Dave McKean’s artwork is what makes the book so horrifying, but Gaiman certainly doesn’t need any help scaring people.)
The Boxtrolls is not quite as scary as Coraline, but at moments it’s pretty darn close. My five-year-old found it necessary to scoot up onto my lap and whisper petulantly, “I could not tell from the commercial that this would be so intense. I’m not sure I would choose this movie again unless I could get more queso.” (Of course, the moment the tide turned and the heroes had the villain on the run, she gushed, “Suddenly I’ve discovered that I love this movie again!”)
The Boxtrolls might legitimately frighten children not only because the villain is so hideously evil but also (and far more importantly) because the supposedly trustworthy adult authority figures do not recognize the villain as evil, do not pay attention to the children’s warnings, and do absolutely nothing to help them. Very quickly the child protagonists realize that the way their world operates is not fair. The villain wants to kill them, and the other adults are so self-absorbed they have no intention of offering the children any help. If they do not come up with some way of stopping the sociopathic villain on their own, he will murder them and cover up their deaths. Meanwhile, the other adults might not even notice that they’re gone. Those stakes are pretty high.
For me, all of this is not a problem. (In fact, I find it all quaintly charming, like a throw-back to the high stakes fairy tales of yore.) But it would become a problem for me if instead of sitting nervously on my lap, my daughter threw back her head, started screaming in panic, had to be taken out of the theater, and suffered from recurring nightmares for the next five weeks. Children are unpredictable, so taking the risk to treat the family to this film is bound to work out badly for some parents.
Others might become disenchanted with the film because the villain is so thoroughly disgusting. His eventual fate is just flat out gross (and the kind of thing that would be less revolting to read than to see).
Again, I actually liked that (not the gross-out factor, but the idea that the villain had a choice and chose his own destruction). The lesson it provides seems pretty solid. Actions have consequences. You can’t help someone who won’t be helped. The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings. That kind of thing. But that doesn’t change the fact that the way it plays out is still really gross and unappealing to watch.
By taking your children to this movie, you’re also opening the door to lots of potentially awkward and problematic question and answer sessions. (I keep thinking of the ad for Time Life Books that seemed to air during every other commercial break when I was a little kid. “Daddy, what’s Vietnam?”)
I mean, there’s bound to be a say-it-ain’t-so factor to The Boxtrolls for the precocious child who is actually paying attention. Surely the people in charge know what they’re doing, right? Surely there’s no way that the “good” people could be so lazy and easily deceived as to let the villain make fools of them, right? Surely the children can get help from their parents, right?
The social satire in The Boxtrolls is pretty sharp and biting, and some might find it kind of over-the-top and unnecessarily distressing. (It’s kind of like Snowpiercer for children or an animated version of a William Blake poem. It’s like a big mash-up of Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, and Charles Dickens. Children will find life neither easy nor fair in Cheesebridge.)
Also several times during the movie, I kept thinking to myself, Most kids are so scared of this villain, but you know there’s got to be at least one sociopathic, Machiavellian little schemer in every audience who watches and takes a very different lesson from the story than the rest. Surely some pint-sized Machiavel keeps his eyes on the screen, tents his fingers, and says, “Aha! So this is how to game the system and gain power in an imperfect world. Oh, but Snatcher’s made a false step there. I’ll avoid that. Yes. I won’t be making that mistake on my rise to power…”
Basically, eighty-five percent of the negatives in this movie could also be viewed as decided strengths. But they’re going to evoke a strong response. This is not a bland, paint-by-numbers kind of affair, not a way to pass a vaguely pleasant afternoon with your kids. The Boxtrolls is strong coffee, and surely some people aren’t going to respond well.
My husband also thought that the beginning was a bit slow. I agree that the pace picks up considerably once Winnie and Eggs meet, but I didn’t have as big a problem with the pacing in the beginning (although taking so much time to establish the antagonist first might be off-putting to small children).
Overall:
The Boxtrolls is a thoroughly worthy successor to Laika’s earlier stop-motion features Coraline and ParaNorman. All three films are cut from the same cloth (or, if you prefer to be more literal, all three are animated from similar materials), so if you liked Coraline and ParaNorman, then I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t like The Boxtrolls, too.
Because of its whimsical setting and genuine horror, The Boxtrolls probably has more in common with Coraline than with ParaNorman (something to bear in mind if you liked only one of those films). So it’s possible that you and your family might enjoy this movie even if you weren’t necessarily sold on the others.
Boxtrolls is beautifully animated, sharply written, and extremely well-acted with moments of genuine menace and a plentiful sprinkling of humor that actually works. All four of us really enjoyed it, and I’d be surprised if it doesn’t snag a nomination for Best Animated Feature (though it would have to overcome some seriously formidable competition to win).