REVIEW: The Boxtrolls

If there's one studio that has found its way into my good graces due to the sheer dedication and elbow grease evident in everything they produce, it would have to be Laika. The successor to the iconic Will Vinton Studios, Laika has found past success with Coraline and the all-around spectacular Paranorman (with the promising Kubo and the Two Strings releasing later this year). A release from Laika is sure to be a treat, which is why I was so excited to finally check out their 2014 film, The Boxtrolls. The entire ad campaign emphasized the staggering attention to detail and amount of manhours it took to produce everything we see on screen; it makes sense then that The Boxtrolls is easily Laika's most visually gorgeous (if not the most story-driven) entry to date.

Taking place in the fantastically Victorian town of Cheesebridge, the plot follows a boy called Eggs (Game of Thrones' Isaac Hempstead Wright); after being separated from his father as a baby, Eggs finds himself in the care of the Boxtrolls, a race of subterrainean goblins with a penchant for acquiring scrap and turning it into marvelous inventions. Trouble is stirred up by the underhanded pest exterminator, Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley), who is hell-bent on eliminating the trolls (perceived as a threat by the residents of Cheesebridge) and earning himself a place amongst the town's cheese-loving elites. It's up to Eggs and a tenacious girl named Winnie (Elle Fanning) to put a stop to all this unfounded prejudice and save Eggs' adoptive family before it's too late.

As one would expect from Laika, this film is utterly gorgeous. The amount of moving characters on-screen at a time can verge on the absurd and the natural flow and weight everything has to it is a true testament to the amount of work that was clearly put into bringing this story to the screen. There's even a delightful mid-credits sequence featuring Richard Ayoade and Nick Frost that spells it out plainly in the event that any audience member didn't understand it just yet; everything you saw on screen, from the tiniest crumb of cheese to the tallest building, was a real, physical object that was constructed and manipulated for hours and hours by a dedicated team of artists and animators. Clearly there was some CGI used to clean things up in post (you can't exactly use stop-motion animation on anything in midair without the use of greenscreen technology), but I still had moments of realization where it dawned on me that things like physics and fabrics and wind all had to be animated by hand, rather than by an algorithm or engine. It's really quite stunning, in hindsight, and is worth the price of admission alone.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the story. While I adore the setting and cheekily macabre tone of the film, the pacing and story structure is sloppy at best; we never really get a feel for these characters in terms of their personalities. The closest thing we've got are two of Snatcher's henchmen, voiced by Ayoade and Frost; everyone does a solid job when it comes to voice acting, but there's hardly any depth to be found here (as opposed to something like Paranorman, a children's story that was the pure definition of "wise beyond its years"). Take Ben Kingsley's character for example; Mr. Snatcher is a wonderfully designed protagonist, with his greasy hair and spindly appendages. He's every cockney bad guy rolled into one and I immediately perked up every time he came on screen, since he was just so much fun to look at (and to listen to; Kingsley is flat-out unrecognizable here). However, we never really get a feel for who he is. We understand he wants to eat cheese with all the socialites (despite his horrid cheese allergy) and we understand he hates Winnie's father and we understand he hates the Boxtrolls, but we never understand why. The movie hints upon something interesting during the climax, but we're left wanting when it comes to some solid characterization, both for Snatcher and for everyone else.

While it's arguably the weakest film Laika has ever produced, that still places it leagues above the majority of children's entertainment available today. Its black, oddball sense of humor, whimsical tone, and obviously stunning visuals give it the feel of a macabre fairy tale (now that I think of it, I feel as though Laika may have a "type"). If you're looking for something cozy and visually engrossing, The Boxtrolls is certainly a solid option that's sure to delight.