In theatres now

For animation junkies like myself, it’s encouraging any time a stop motion film makes its way to multiplexes. When it’s the new film from Laika, the animation studio behind the excellent Coraline and Paranorman, it’s grounds for genuine excitement. While the company’s newest feature, The Boxtrolls, isn’t anywhere near the fun labyrinth that Coraline was, it’s still a fun and gorgeous stop frame animated movie that never feels rote or derivative.

The Boxtrolls is about boxtrolls, who are … trolls that wear boxes. The trolls steal trash from humans to make complex machines, and they’re raising an orphan human boy named Eggs (Isaac Hempstead-Wright). They live beneath Cheesebridge, a vaguely steampunk aristocratic city where a ruling elite demonstrates its power through the eating and critiquing of fine cheese. When an ambitious pest controller (Ben Kingsley) makes it his goal to exterminate the boxtrolls and rise to the cheese-eating aristocracy, it’s up to Eggs and his cohorts to stop him.

The movie looks amazing. The character and set design are unique and totally creative. The movement of the camera and characters are smoother and more fluid than any stop motion film I’ve seen before. The animators do things with light and smoke that seem like they should be impossible in this medium.

The best sequences are the ones involving the trolls, where story and character development are achieved without dialogue: this brand of purely visual storytelling is what animation is all about. Still, The Boxtrolls could be much more than it is. Despite a stellar voice cast, the dialogue-driven scenes falter where the visual ones succeed. Character motivations become muddied by plot contrivances.

The Boxtrolls is far from a disappointment. I just wish that, with all the time and effort put into the look and design, they’d spent more time on the script.

Published in Volume 69, Number 5 of The Uniter (October 1, 2014)