Troy_Campbell Review of The Boxtrolls

The Boxtrolls (2014)

Animation is impressive, but the film is only intermittently entertaining.

[5/10 · 1 October 2014]

Coming after their brilliant Coraline and fun filled ParaNorman, the latest Claymation flick from Laika Entertainment doesn't quite reach the heights of its ancestors. As always, the meticulous stop motion animation is wondrous to watch and, for the cineastes in the audience, appreciating the painstaking effort is a pleasure in its own right. Yet there's a spark missing from The Boxtrolls that stops it transitioning from appreciated art to an outright enjoyable movie. The story – the harmless, underground-dwelling creatures of the title are being ruthlessly exterminated, causing the boy they raised from birth to stand up for them – just doesn't have the legs necessary for a 90 minute outing, nor does it offer up enough laughs for what is meant to be a dark comedy. Another problem is that the preposterously stereotypical characters all act the exact way you would expect (Ben Kingsley's sneering, oily scoundrel Archibald Snatcher is particularly uninteresting), leaving no room for surprise or genuine affection. Hence all the heavy lifting is left to the superb stop motion animation, a few choice chase sequences and cheeky visual references; enough to keep you impressed but only intermittently entertained.