From the off-kilter minds of Laika comes another wacky childrens’ adventure that takes a hard look at difficult adult problems. In Coraline the issue was absentee parents. In ParaNorman it was dealing with being a social outcast. And now with The Boxtrolls, similarly with ParaNorman, the conflict arises from pariahs attempting to be rehabilitated back into the collective. Like Villeneuve’s Enemy, which focused on the desire to ascend the rungs of the social ladder, The Boxtrolls‘ strife stems from envy and desperation. Where one is in life is never good enough; there’s bound to be more cheddar near the top of the food chain.
In the town of Cheesebridge, Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) wants to become apart of the elite White Hat group. The club is made up of the wealthiest members of the city and their chief activity is eating the rarest, and smelliest, of cheeses. Like Freemasons and Shriners, being a White Hat means one is brought into the light of exclusivity and becomes a better person. But Snatcher has no way to enter the group. So he vows to capture all the pesky boxtrolls and eliminate them once and for all. As you have probably deduced, Snatcher is the villain.
It’s rare when a villain becomes the center of a film. But it’s a great treat. Snatcher is a complex individual much more than being that-evil-guy. Amy Nicholson made the allusion of Snatcher to Hitler which is a fair and accurate comparison. It’s easy to write off Hitler as a madman. Not to sympathize with his perspective, but he had a fascinating psychology. How did he form such hatred in his mind? There had to be some serious abuse in his childhood to lead to such a bent perspecitve. We’ll never know what made Hitler go off the rails, but with Snatcher we get a few glimmers and insights. Eating cheese makes him bloat up and his exterior turns into a Quasimodo that physically exposes his mental state. He is a sexual deviant too. Which at first is alarming for a childrens’ movie. However, like the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, pedophiles are the scariest monsters so it works.
On the figuratively brighter, though actually darker, side of Cheesebridge are the Boxtrolls. They are scavengers like gremlins but not menacingly destructive. Taking the townsfolk thrown out and forgotten things, the Boxtrolls create new gadgets and gizmos. The one Boxtroll who doesn’t belong and who is not quite like the others is Eggs (Isaac Hempstead Wright). Eggs, a human orphan, is the key and the bridge between the two worlds like Freder in Metropolis (which also shares many similarities with The Boxtrolls). His counterpart is one spritely Winnie (Elle Fanning), the precocious daughter of the White Hat order’s highest member, Lord Portley-Rind (Jared Harris). Eggs abounds in meekness, while Winnie makes up for his timidity with violent tendencies. They’re definitely an odd couple for sure.
Populating the rest of Cheesebridge are Snatcher’s befuddled henchmen, Mr. Trout (Nick Frost), Mr. Pickles (Richard Ayoade), and Mr. Gristle (Tracy Morgan). The Boxtrolls Fish, Oil Can, Wheels, Bucket, Shoe, Clocks, Spes, Sparky, Fragile, Sweets, and Knickers are voiced by Nika Futterman, Fred Tatasciore, Pat Fraley, Steve Blum, and Dee Bradley Baker. And Simon Pegg lends his oratory chops to the Herbert Trubshaw, the plucky inventor with a very important past.
It’s curious that stop-motion features of late have all built up to one big explosive setpiece. And here it’s no exception. The fluidity of the cameras and the smoothness of the characters in the world are orchestrated and choreographed with such precision that it makes big budget, live action films pale in comparision. It’s spectacle animation at the pinnacle of the craft and something to gleefully marvel at and consume.
Something or Nothing:
Something. The Boxtrolls is a brilliantly animated film that pushes the boundaries of stop-motion techniques. It’s a subtle and understated which may be off putting to children. But that’s the wonder of animation. It doesn’t just have to be confined to entertainment for tikes and can transcend it’s initial and expected state.
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