I could already tell from the
way it was marketed, but it’s already obvious that The Boxtrolls, a
likeable and funny film, will not do anywhere near as well as Laika’s
previous films. While I can see there being life after Selick for the studio, what
hooked people before was associations with Tim Burton and Neil Gaiman. What The
Boxtrolls needed was the kind of concept that immediately hooks people in,
like Wall-E or Happy Feet. They needed something that kept the
dark edge but still seemed accessible. A grimy film about ugly trolls who live underground
with a hermit crab-like relationship with cardboard boxes may have a lot of
gems in the actual execution – and indeed it does – but I am completely sure
that fewer people will give it a chance than it deserves. If they had marketed
it with the human characters more to the fore, as the main point of
identification and even with some cute factor highlighted, it could have
attracted more of a crowd. But the trolls themselves were very much where the
campaign centred, and that felt to me like trying to sell Frozen on
those funny little rock troll things. They may have an important place in the
plot, but they’re not what an audience identifies with.
And that gets in the way of a
cracking story full of very well-executed characters. It has a neat set-up that
both gives us our hero and sets the antagonist’s actions into motion – though we
have to assume the evil Mr Snatcher works extremely slowly for it to really
work.
In the rather wonderful towering
fantasy-English town of Cheesebridge ,
the curious little Boxtrolls live a nocturnal existence scavenging for bits of
technology to put into their rather steampunk-ish lair.
When a respected
inventor vanishes and his son is taken by the Boxtrolls, the community begins
to fear them – egged on by the nefarious Mr Snatcher, something of a tribute to
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s child catcher, and voiced with as much evil
camp as Ben Kingsley can muster. Snatcher is the most dangerous kind of social
climber, desperate to join the elite of Cheesebridge, who wear white hats and
mingle to discuss governing the town over all the finest cheeses – and he will
do anything for this goal. He is aided by three henchmen who are rather
brilliantly rendered – one is utterly unhinged, but the other two, played by Nick
Frost (for once having a larger role in a film than Simon Pegg) and Richard Ayoade
(star of The IT Crowd), wrestle throughout the film with questions of
morality and the ever-dwindling chance that they are in fact the good guys.
The child taken by the
Boxtrolls, however, was not snatched away. He was given willingly by his father
(Pegg), who was attacked by Snatcher, demanding he invent a killing machine.
Adopted by the Boxtrolls, he grows up believing he is one of them, even getting
a name like theirs, based on what is on his box – ‘Eggs’. Eggs is joined by the
likes of ‘Fish’, ‘Shoe’ and, indeed, ‘Fragile’. When he is somewhat grown but
Snatcher has succeeded in capturing almost all the Boxtrolls, he has a chance
encounter with Winifred, daughter of the highest-ranking official in town. Winnie
(Elle Fanning, spirited as ever) has something of a fixation on blood and gore,
a character quirk that sits just on the right side of contrived, and resents
how her father is much more interested in cheese than in her. Together, they
put together a plan to rescue Eggs’ adoptive family – but ultimately it is
Snatcher’s own plan reaching fruition and then finally him getting everything
he ever wanted that proves his undoing.
Some of the scenes here are
the funniest in any animated film I’ve seen in a very long while. Eggs trying
to pass in high society is just the right balance of embarrassing, disgusting,
adorable and humbling. I loved the henchmen’s banter, and while I don’t usually
like that kind of humour, I enjoyed the closing stinger of Ayoade’s character
musing about his existence. Snatcher was animated with such grotesque relish,
and I very much enjoyed the steampunk elements. Laika also seem to be the only
American animation studio alongside Dreamworks-in-serious-mode who seem to be
able to get adolescent characters right these days: Eggs and Winnie are not
only a very enjoyable odd couple, they are both very sympathetic in their own
right, and Eggs in particular I found extremely cute – helped by a natural sort
of performance with an estuary twang from Isaac Hempstead-Wright, better-known
as Bran from Game of Thrones.
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