2014
So here we are again as I work towards being somewhat current with the movies I review. Today I’m taking a look at The Boxtrolls, and I have to say that this one’s a bit tricky for me. While I can appreciate the effort and talent that goes into Claymation, it always comes off as ugly to me. It makes the experience of watching a whole film that celebrates the art form somewhat unpleasant.
That being said, they went all out with this one. I can’t think of any stop motion film that I’ve seen with animation this fluid. So much of it works so well, in fact, that the moments where it doesn’t come together (the rare scene where expressions or models seem to move just a little too much) it’s actually a jarring reminder that the film is comprised of individually posed models painfully adjusted fractions of an inch for each fame of animation. Sure, they padded the crowds with CG extras, but the dedication to the craft shines through. If you love animation then you don’t need to read any further; this is absolutely a film you should see. If you need to know more, read on into the more spoiler-y part of this review.
Spoiler territory ahead!
While I can’t say that I loved the look of The Boxtrolls, it did its job of sucking me into the world quite nicely. Everything I saw looked like it belonged in the bizarre city of an undefined era that they put in front of me. The technology was believable, the characters unique, and the overall personality of everything present was quite clear. That’s also the movie’s problem.
See, with the exception of two henchmen to the film’s big bad, I really didn’t like any of the characters in The Boxtrolls.
The main protagonist, named Eggs after the box he wears, is about as generic a character as you can imagine. There’s nothing particularly bad about him, he’s just a bland do-gooder looking to protect his family of box dwelling trolls. His female counterpart Winnie, on the other hand, is a gratingly obnoxious brat of privilege. She’s the daughter of the apparent leader of the city (there’s actually a triumvirate of white hat wearers but he’s the only one that seems to have much say) and is routinely neglected by him, which leads to her acting out. She’s simultaneously the most believable character of the group and one of the most unlikeable, in my opinion.
The premise is fine, with the titular Boxtrolls living underground, hiding from the surface dwellers who hate them, only coming out to grab bits of shiny to tinker with. Archibald Snatcher, villain of the film and town exterminator, uses circumstance to elevate the hatred of the Boxtrolls and negotiates to get his own white hat for power, prestige, and a fine assortment of delicious cheeses. Our hero Eggs is exactly the circumstance used, a child taken by the trolls when he was very young and raised by them, eating bugs and getting serenaded by a lovely handsaw violin. We flash forward through a montage of the boy growing up while more and more Boxtrolls are captured before we’re into the story proper.
And honestly, that’s where the movie started losing me. The setup was good but after they had everything in place it got outright boring. There was running around, decent effects, character moments, and it was all just bland and predictable. Of course the father figure, Fish, gets captured, of course Eggs goes on an adventure to the surface to save him, of course he ends up working with the bratty daughter of the town leader, and of course it’s revealed that Snatcher was using the Boxtrolls he caught to build a giant death machine so he could kill the ones that remain. (It’s a kids film, we can’t have the wholesale slaughter of something like a hundred hideously adorable trolls, now can we?)
One incredibly clever bit that comes up in all of this, though, is that Snatcher is so consumed by his quest for a white hat that he refuses to admit a pretty appalling short-coming in his plan. I’ll leave you to discover THAT for yourselves.
There’s also a full scene where we see Eggs, who has all the manners of any proper Boxtroll, trying to navigate a high society dinner event and failing quite horribly. He’s inevitably kicked out as a menace and realizes he’s going to have to save his family by himself. After a requisite scene of moping the final act kicks off with a giant steampunk war machine breaking into the Boxtroll cave, capturing the remaining trolls, and whisking them away for execution. All my lizard brain needed to hear was ‘giant steampunk war machine’ to be snapped back into rapt attention.
The action was good, the moral about not hiding and being true to yourself was good, and the added pleasure of Snatcher’s final defeat was wonderfully played. I just wish I hadn’t had to sit through an incredibly dull middle portion to get to it. All in all, I don’t regret seeing the film, and I can see this as being a solid choice for anyone with kids they need to entertain (though you’ll probably want to keep an eye on their table manners after that dinner scene). If you’re not an animation buff, you may want to wait ’til it’s available on video or catch it as a matinee.
— Dan D (guest movie reviewer)
