The Boxtrolls is the latest offering produced by the Laika – the studio that brought you Coraline and ParaNorman, and much like those films, The Boxtrolls looks to mix a bit of macabre into the family adventure comedy genre with this tale of fitting in and acceptance. While this film might not be as complex as its predecessors, it’s probably Laika’s most audience accessible film and provides plenty of laughs, great characters, and jaw-dropping animation.
Eggs (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) is an orphan boy raised by the mysterious and publicly maligned Boxtrolls, creatures that wear boxes for practical uses like hiding in plain sight. They make their home below the city in caves connected to the sewers, but when status-seeking Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) makes a pledge to exterminate every last Boxtroll to gain membership to the city’s societal upper class group “The White Hats,” Eggs is swept into a crusade to save his friends, and discovers the truth about who he is and where he came from.
The voice cast is great in the film, but really the runaway stars of the film are the gibberish-speaking Boxtrolls themselves. The designs are gorgeous and adorably realized with each one getting clever, minor things to distinguish themselves. Eggs’ father-figure Fish (Dee Bradley Baker) is named obviously for the fish on his box that resembles a tie, and they have similarly cute names that normally revolve around what’s on their box.
Eggs makes his first human friend in Winnie Portley-Rind (Elle Fanning), a surprising feisty redhead who at first appearance seems like a normal girl, but reveals an extremely humorous obsession for gruesome dark things – namely, all the horrible things she thinks Boxtrolls are capable of since she’s never met one. Fanning is quite funny in the role and showed more life than in many performances she’s turned in lately.
Ben Kingsley is unconventionally weird in his cross-dressing, greasy opportunist Archibald Snatcher. There are quite a few strange things in this film, but Snatcher is at the top of the list. Tracy Morgan steals quite a few scenes as Snatcher’s dim-witted lackey Mr. Gristle with the limited vocabulary. The kids in the audience will most likely be quoting him as they leave the theater along with Simon Pegg’s catchphrase “Jelly!” spewing character – whose identity I won’t spoil here. Pegg takes what could have been a really annoying voice acting role and makes it endearing and laugh-inducing.
Winnie’s parents also get some great character actors to portray them in Jared Harris and Toni Collette as Lord and Lady Portley-Rind. Lord Portley-Rind is a head member of “The White Hats,” whose main purpose seems to be to get together and eat and try new cheeses. Apparently the town and most of its characters are oddly cheese obsessed. This is a Laika film, so you just have to roll with the insanity at certain points. Collette and Harris bring as much gravitas and fun as they can to fairly forgettable roles.
But the film shines with its vast color palette and gorgeous animation that fill this extremely detailed world. The Boxtrolls’ cave is a wonder and I can’t wait to go back on Blu-ray and try to catch just everything that’s going on there. The Boxtrolls are comparable to highly industrious and clever Pugs. They have the adorable nature of a goofy looking puppy with an only slightly better grasp of speaking the English language. By the time Snatcher starts to make good on his threats, I had already fallen in love with the little guys and wanted no harm to come to them. The film had me.
While the movie isn’t as safe as other Disney and Pixar animation offerings, it’s easily the most commercially digestible of Laika’s films. The Boxtrolls is wildly quirky and sometimes just a bit too weird, but it’s easily the most magical film of the year so far and full of heart and tremendous visuals that both kids and adults will fall in love with.