Laika studios have quickly become a prolific name in the
animation circuit, having helmed acclaimed films such as Coraline and
ParaNorman. While I don’t consider them to be near the same level of Pixar,
they’ve still made films that are undeniable feats of imagination.
However, ever since their debut with Coralne, it seems all
of their follow up films have gotten progressively worse, all culminating in
their latest release, The Boxtrolls. Leading up to the film, no one was really
sure what it was about, and its enigmatic trailers fascinated us because of it.
However, that promise of exceptional things to come turned out to be for
naught, being the studio’s most technically masterful, but conceptually paper
thin effort.
The problems with the film are immediate. It drops us in the middle
of the world with very little context, opening with a sequence intentionally
meant to hide a major twist in the film, but backfires in not allowing us
breathing room to soak up the atmosphere, and ultimately, the whole film moves
at lightning speed with no time to let the surroundings sink in. The characters
are not very interesting; especially in the case of one-note lead character
Eggs. You’ve seen this clichéd character a thousand times, a fish out of water
coming to grips with identity and differing customs, and acting as a bridge
between two worlds. There’s nothing new to him.
Because of this, it’s the film’s villain, Archibald Snatcher,
who winds up stealing the entire film. Voiced by an unrecognizable Ben Kingsley
(you wouldn’t even know it’s him until the credits), this character channels
Monty Python vet Terry Jones to create an utterly diabolical and nasty force of
nature, manipulating his goodwill with the public to his advantage, and
painting the Boxtrolls as vicious monsters to boost his social status. It’s a
fantastic, truly engrossing and villainous role that allows Kingsley to
joyously sink his teeth into, and he does so with a slight twinge of dark
humor.
However, the overall comedy still leaves much to be desired,
almost feeling like an exercise of throwing every joke you have into it,
whether or not they even work in context. The most standout comic bits come
from Elle Fanning as a girl Eggs meets with a disturbingly macabre imagination,
and Nick Frost and Richard Ayoade as two morally conflicted henchmen. Outside of
that, the comedy feels too inconsistent, trying to channel the quirky likes of
Monty Python’s Flying Circus (right down to Eric Idle himself penning a major
song for the film), but its attempts at homage don’t come across very well,
with the most obnoxious gags being frequent cheese puns. This movie seems more
obsessed with cheese than Chester Cheetah.
The same can be said of the film’s thematic ideas, which
includes the value of materialism defining who you are, the issue of parents not
listening to their children (A Laika trope played up to self-parody here), and
even the regression into old-fashioned survival tactics rather than adapting.
But that’s precisely the problem, the film doesn’t know which of these
potentially interesting themes it wants to be its main focus. Honestly, they
can’t even be called themes, but merely concepts that aren’t nearly developed
enough and are just… cheesy.
However, this is a film that is more impressive in its
technical qualities. Everything in the film has been created from scratch, and
the very lived in, dirty, and littered production design of the film is done to
absolute brilliance. I always have a soft spot for any film made in
stop motion, and the designs all across the board are simply fantastic,
especially an impressively animated climax. There’s also a beautiful score
provided by Dario Marianelli of Atonement fame, and it’s among one of the year’s
very best. But besides that, there’s not much to the film. It’s gotten a fair
share of buzz for an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, but
personally, to see it get in over more deserving entries like The Book of Life
would be a disappointment.
But in fairness, maybe there’s more beneath the surface that
I’m not giving the film credit for. Will the film be more rewarding on
rewatches? Will more clever nuances and surprising depth reveal themselves?
Does the Wensleydale on my sample tray have a nutty tang to it? I don’t know,
BECAUSE I DON’T CARE ABOUT CHEESE!
**1/2 / *****
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