Movie Review: The Boxtrolls is a stop-motion animation stunner

THIS stop-motion animated stunner’s calculated combo of the gorgeous and the grotesque is anything but your average child-pleasing cartoon.

The Boxtrolls (PG)

Directors: Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi

Starring: the voices of Isaac Hampstead Wright, Jared Harris, Ben Kingsley, Elle Fanning.

Rating : ***1/2

Who knows what the average child will make of The Boxtrolls?

For this stop-motion stunner’s calculated combo of the gorgeous and the grotesque is anything but your average child-pleasing cartoon.

Loosely extracted from the best-selling fantasy book Here Be Monsters by Alan Snow, The Boxtrolls is the third feature from Laika Studios.

As evidenced by their earlier productions Coraline and ParaNorman, the Laika outfit work in an edgier and more eccentric realm than their rivals at Pixar and DreamWorks.

More than a kids’ film ... the trolls in a scene from The Boxtrolls.

The story of The Boxtrolls takes place in the medieval hamlet of Cheesebridge, where the locals are in a right old state about a community of strange creatures living not-so-secretly in their midst.

How best to describe the Boxtrolls? Well, they are blue-ish grey in colour, most at home in an underground sewer, and prefer to dress in discarded food packaging.

On the rare occasion a Boxtroll ventures above ground, it is only to swipe and recycle the refuse that keeps their hidden world going.

It should be added that beneath their often hideous appearance, the Boxtrolls are the kindliest, caring monsters a kid could ever meet.

Eggs (voiced by Isaac Hempstead-Wright) and Winnie (Elle Fanning) in a scene from The Boxtrolls.

Though their good name has been repeatedly dragged through the slime by village villains such as Lord Portley-Rind (voiced by Jared Harris) and Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley), there is one child in Cheesebridge who knows the truth about the Boxtrolls.

The little orphan boy Eggs (Isaac Hampstead Wright) was rescued from danger and raised by the Boxtrolls, and he is not about to let his friends be hunted out of Cheesebridge forever.

Baby Eggs plays with troll Fish in The Boxtrolls.

It must be stated the visuals of this movie sometimes cross the line from playfully yucky to confrontingly icky. As a result, potential viewers without a few solid years of primary school under their belt should steer clear.

Anyone else with a Tim Burton-fostered love of the creatively creepy can rest assured they will find The Boxtrolls a demented delight.

Originally published as Movie Review: The Boxtrolls is a stop-motion animation stunner