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Fans of "Coraline" and "ParaNorman," the deft, eccentric supernatural fairy tales created by Oregon-based Laika animation house, have every reason to anticipate "The Boxtrolls." Laika's latest feature is based on Alan Snow's 2005 book "Here Be Monsters!" part one of "The Ratbridge Chronicles." For the film's purposes, the mythical hilltop town of Ratbridge has changed its name to Cheesebridge.
Something else has changed en route to the screen. "The Boxtrolls" remains relentlessly busy up through its final credits, and it's clever in a nattering way. But it's virtually charmless.
And there's the matter of villain overexploitation. Pathetically addicted to conflict and cheap sources of dread, screenwriters — even good ones — often make the mistake of handing their antagonist the lion's share of the material, allowing the menace to sit on the story in an unhelpful way. Such is the case here with the Boxtroll exterminator, Archibald Snatcher, voiced by top-billed Ben Kingsley. A mixture of Roald Dahl's "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"-derived Child Catcher and a variety of Monty Python grotesques, Snatcher runs the show. It is this man's seething class envy guiding the thing; he is a lowly "red hat," craving acceptance into the "white hat" cadre of snoots running Cheesebridge. (The setting is a steampunk blend of 19th- and 20th-century elements.)
Fighting for attention in his own story, a human boy named Eggs (Isaac Hempstead Wright, "Game of Thrones") has been raised by the marginalized Boxtrolls, who live in an underground lair full of fantastical inventions. Eggs, so named after the discarded cardboard box he wears like his troll brethren, teams up with the mayor's daughter Winnie (Elle Fanning) to prove the Boxtrolls' right to peaceable coexistence with the human element.
Directed by Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable, "The Boxtrolls" is one of those movies that looks tantalizing based on its better still photographs, if you can get past the indistinctly differentiated trolls themselves. The world created here is one of considerable thought and detail. In execution, the style of the animation isn't straight-up, old-school stop-motion; rather, it's a blend of stop-motion, hand-drawn and computer-generated images. That third technique, I think, has a way of lessening the folkloric quality and pushing the results into something I never thought I'd say about a Laika movie: the usual.
The voice actors include such aces as Simon Pegg, Richard Ayoade and Nick Frost, along with Tracy Morgan as a slobbering, sniveling Snatcher minion. The gross-out bits, such as Snatcher's miserable skin reaction to his beloved cheese, catch the eye without ever really getting the laughs rolling. Then again, the mere mention of the words "cheese," "stop-motion" and "animation" cannot help but conjure the glorious universe of Wallace & Gromit, the Aardman wonders for the ages. Up against those two, what chance does a technically impressive but rather harsh item such as "The Boxtrolls" have, really?
"The Boxtrolls" - 2 stars
MPAA rating: PG (for action, some peril and mild rude humor)
Running time: 1:36
Opens: Friday
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