The Box­trolls

“They must know they’re the bad guys. Why else would they try to hide from us? We are the good guys,” says Mr Trout (Nick Frost) refer­ring to the box­trolls that he and exter­mi­na­tor bud­dies are hunting.

“Yeah, I sup­pose we are,” assents Mr Pick­les (Richard Ayoade) whack­ing a box troll, with no trace of conscience.

Meta­tex­tu­al con­fu­sion among bad­dies is a gag played to delight­ful per­fec­tion in the third stop-motion ani­ma­tion from Lai­ka stu­dios. While it would be out­landish to sug­gest that this skill­ful­ly drawn kid’s tale is about the exis­ten­tial chaos of the adult world, this is only because The Box­trolls is about more than the one thing. The biggest accom­plish­ment of co-direc­tors Gra­ham Annable and Antho­ny Stacchi’s sto­ry –based on Alan Snow’s book Here Be Mon­sters – is that it touch­es as con­vinc­ing­ly on the light tra­di­tion­al notes of a children’s adven­ture yarn as it does on murky adult deal­ings. A keen adult mind could even come away with com­ments on the nature of evil, thanks to a half-com­ic, half-res­o­nant finale that sees Mr Pick­les and Mr Trout answer­ing ques­tions that many a holo­caust film has put to Nazi antagonists.

But all that is very much in the back­ground. In the fore­ground we have the plight of Eggs, or as he’s known in the fear­ful Eng­lish Vic­to­ri­an soci­ety – the Trap­shaw baby. Leg­end above ground goes that he was kid­napped by box­trolls, awful, sav­age crea­tures that occu­py a sub­ter­ranean lair laced by rivers of blood. The truth is the Box­trolls are peace­ful types, who love to jam on home-made instru­ments and col­lect trashed items like but­tons and fish­bones. Eggs is hav­ing an ace child­hood, grow­ing up like Mowgli in The Jun­gle Book, obliv­i­ous to his differences.

But there is a long shad­ow cast by the Exter­mi­na­tors. An ear­ly sequence shows Eggs nod­ding off cocooned by a vast nest of box­es. A slow fade shows the nest thin­ning. Box­troll num­bers are dwin­dling as the Exter­mi­na­tors’ night­ly prowls prove suc­cess­ful. Snatch­er or –to give him his full ridicu­lous name – Archibald Pene­lope Snatch­er, is the dri­ving force behind these night­ly kid­nap­pings. With the voice of a snarling Ben Kings­ley and the appear­ance of a neglect­ed Tim­o­thy Spall, Snatch­er is a tra­di­tion­al bad­die in that evil is telegraphed by his phys­i­cal bear­ing. But as with all ele­ments of The Box­trolls, the obvi­ous is only half the pic­ture. As well as being The Vil­lain, Snatch­er is a class-obsessed psy­chopath for whom the erad­i­ca­tion of wee crit­ters is a pass­port to high soci­ety. Impli­cat­ed in his vio­lence are the ambiva­lent upper class­es who don’t get their hands dirty, but whose inter­est in pow­er and com­fort ahead of truth and moral­i­ty enables mis­deeds to hap­pen in their name.

It feels extra­or­di­nary to write a seri­ous-mind­ed social trea­tise in response to a fam­i­ly film pow­ered by pup­pets. It can­not be over-empha­sised that all of these ques­tions are thrown up in the light­est of tones in the most aes­thet­ic of worlds. The charm of The Box­trolls comes from incred­i­ble and often com­ic detail of ani­ma­tion. As with Laika’s Para­Nor­man and Cora­line before­hand, events unfold with­in a steam­punk aes­thet­ic. Rust­ing sil­ver pipes and scrap­yard met­al wheels make every­thing go. There’s always some­thing in the cor­ner of the frame, be it a decap­ti­tat­ed ted­dy head (humour verges on the gris­ly) or a pile of records by the likes of ​‘Stil­ton John’. Cheese makes a recur­rent appear­ance on the tables of the rich, in the dreams of the bad and in the back­ground of the good. This abstract role for a deli­cious and var­ied dairy prod­uct is the final, hilar­i­ous, stymy­ing proof that this is a film to be enjoyed with a free, unboxed mind.