The
Boxtrolls is a movie of such strong virtues that it’s tempting to overlook
its shortcomings. Unfortunately, they are there, spoiling the wonder of classic
dark fantasy (Alan Snow’s Here Be
Monsters! to be exact).
To be optimistic, there is more to
admire than regret here. As always, LAIKA’s puppets become as real and move as
fluidly as any cartoon, there is even a nifty philosophical gag about the craft
for those who sit to the end of the credits (which are fun hand-drawn gags in
themselves). Each character is a lively creation. Like Walt Disney first did
for his seven dwarfs for Snow White,
each of the playful trolls is a distinct invention, named after the type of box
it uses for its shell. There’s Wheels, Oil Can, Shoe, and Fish (Dee Bradley
Baker), who is a sort of father figure. To who?
Why to the human baby they took from the human world above and raised as
their own in their secret cavern under the streets of the town.
They took in this “Trubshaw Baby”
(as he became known after his kidnapping) as one of their one and named him
after the egg carton he wears over his shirt for reasons the movie explains in
due time, but it’s clear from the start that the world above is a nasty place
to be. The elite ruler, Lord Portley-Rind (Jared Harris) reigns from a castle
high above a mountain-tip overlooking the village. Both the ladder to and the
aspiration of royalty in Cheesebridge is to be a good judge of cheese, a title
distinguished by a coveted white top hat.
This is an even stronger throwback
to Great Britain’s class system than 2005’s Wallace
and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The baddies, a gang of boxtroll
exterminators, are marked by their tattered red hats. They are a dirty mean
bunch that aspires to bigger things. Though the movie makes the point that,
“Cheese, boxes, hats, are not what make you. You make you,” the rest of
Cheesebridge seems to scorn both the trolls and the exterminators, and that’s
the irony. Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) and his men live in a stark factory much
like the cavern of the creatures they chase.
Oh, but The Boxtrolls takes plenty of jabs at the upper-class as well. As
Eggs (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) makes his way to the grand ball to warn the town
of Snatcher’s evil plan, the movie takes every opportunity to treat the pompous
society with ridicule and by the time he is humiliated and cast away from the
castle Eggs vows never to be seen amongst the “real monsters” again. Indeed,
Lord Portley-Rind cares more about his hat and cheeses than Winnie (Elle
Fanning), his rebellious daughter, in contrast to the strong sense of family
among the troll community and their adopted son.
There is a sort of rusty old charm
to stop-motion animation that CGI, for all of its razzle-dazzle, can’t capture.
Each character seems to exist of real matter and occupy real space as, indeed,
a puppet does. No matter how grotesque (a troll, a grimy exterminator, etc.),
each being or object here is crafted with such delicate care, they appeal to multiple
senses. We can feel and therefore
crave the cheese the judges hold, we can feel the sensory appeal of the
prestigious hats when they are described as “white and fluffy” and feel the
desire to hold one. Even the bugs that are fodder for the trolls look good
enough to grab.
After animators in the United
States abandoned it for other techniques, Great Britain took to stop-motion
animation and did wonderful things with it, especially Cosgrove Hall’s
adaptation of The Wind in the Willows.
The charm never wore off in England and found a new cast in Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit. Though an American production, The Boxtrolls
is a healthy reminder of the primal beauty offered in The Wind in the Willows
(Snatcher’s most wicked henchman, Mr. Gristle, even bares and unflattering
resemblance to Mr. Toad while Mr. Pickles, his most eager to redeem, could not
look more like Rat when sporting his fake whiskers).
The
Boxtrolls brings back the old pleasantry of a vanishing art form and is the
perfect way to bring a storybook to life. But the whimsy is cut short by
hurried writing, which turns out to be a costlier mistake here than usual.
The first mistake of directors
Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable was opening the film with the trolls’
presence already established in Cheesebridge, where they have become as a sight
as pigeons and rats. It would have been nice to have witnessed the surprise and
panic stirred by their arrival. What did the villagers think when these little
green men started popping out from under the streets? Was there fear or
amazement? How did the hostility first start? The film foregoes all of that and
begins at a point when all the shock and awe has passed and the trolls may as
well be everyday vermin. They are no longer so much feared, but loathed.
Besides the mystery of what happened to the Trubshaw Baby, there is no longer
any mystery about them and this over familiarity with the supernatural may be
what disappointed Alonso Duralde who called it, “A charmless misfire.”
Duralde is not being quite fair. The
Boxtrolls has a thumping heart and designer’s elegance, but for all its
artistic flair and creative inventions, described accurately by LAIKA president
Travis Knight as, “a visually dazzling mash-up of gripping detective story,
absurdist comedy, and steampunk adventure with a surprisingly wholesome heart.
It’s Dickens by way of Monty Python,” The
Boxtrolls is surprisingly blasé about its own magic and fantasy. It’s
surprising considering LAIKA’s fascination with secret worlds. Coraline, the studio’s best film,
introduced a parallel world just a wall away from a mundane existence, with
obvious signs that something terrible was hidden behind its pleasures. ParaNorman was considerably less
meticulous in developing its chills, in part because the little boy of the
title had the gift of seeing ghosts before the movie began, but it still
managed to introduce the spirits in such a level that shocked us along with the
child accustomed to seeing them. In The
Boxtrolls, the little creatures are treated as just another part of the
city. Wondrous as they may be in themselves, we need to see them strike awe in
our fellow humans to be convinced of their power.
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