Meanwhile, we meet the Boxtrolls. The Boxtroll lair is a beautifully-imagined space: a gigantic cave, crammed full of found objects, gears, lightbulbs and toasters; things thrown away by the Cheesebridge residents. The Boxtrolls speak, but we don't understand their language, and there are no subtitles. The Boxtrolls exist as beautiful evidence of the sheer power and clarity of pantomime. They babble and gurgle to one another, and we understand every word. Among the Boxtrolls is a little boy named Eggs (Isaac Hempstead Wright), named so because that's the word on the box he wears like a bulky sweater. Eggs' Boxtroll mentor is a kindly, worried little creature named Fish (Dee Bradley Baker), who looks suspiciously like Abe Vigoda (a connection with his Boxtroll name?) The two play music together. They are friends. Eggs has always lived with the Boxtrolls, and thinks he is a Boxtroll.
LAIKA has outdone itself in its imagining of this complex world. There's a ballroom dance in Lord Portley-Rind's mansion that has to be seen to be believed. At times, we see it from Winnie's perspective, the big swooping skirts at her eye level whooshing by her, and other times, the camera circles up to look down on the twirling colorful couples. The streets of Cheesebridge are steep and twisting, with lonely streetlights struggling to emanate their light through the blue gloom. There is a gigantic bouncing cheese wheel, catapulting itself down the slopes like some engine of doom and destruction, both hilarious and scary. After a night of scavenging, the Boxtrolls stack themselves into a sleeping formation, and, overhead, the bare lightbulbs they have hung from the dirt ceiling turn their lair into a place of wonder and magic. These images have great emotional resonance. The details of the costumes are amazing, the frayed stitching on Snatcher's waistcoat, the tiered ruffles of Winnie's pink dress, the gleaming ridiculous badges sewn onto the front of Portley-Rind's coat. The images do not have a modern gleam, they are not slick. They feel slightly tattered, hand-made, deteriorating.
Without being didactic, "The Boxtrolls" presents the dangers of a hierarchical society, separated out into high-status and low, and also has some very interesting and moving things to say about identity, family, and morality. There is a suggestion that a moral compass exists on its own, whether it has been nurtured in us or not. Critical thinking skills means you look around and evaluate reality based on the evidence right in front of you. The residents of Cheesebridge, drowning in myth, rumor, and the comfort of intermittent mob violence against the Boxtrolls, are unable to do that. But Winnie slowly realizes she has been lied to her whole life. She is able to evaluate her world and see that the way things are set up is wrong and unfair.
"The Boxtrolls" is a beautiful example of the potential in LAIKA's stop-motion approach, and the images onscreen are tactile and layered. But, as always, it's the story that really matters, and the story told here is funny, ugly, poignant and true.
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