The Boxtrolls Review

It's so frustrating when there is a movie I really want to see in theaters and then miss the opportunity. I really had wanted to see The Boxtrolls (2014) in theaters, but somehow missed it. I'm a big fan of stop motion animation, and even though it seems to be a dying art in the face of high tech digital animation, once in awhile another feature film hits theaters. I'm glad there are studios and talented stop motion animators keeping the medium alive. The Boxtrolls ended up being a charming film featuring some stellar animation.

The Boxtrolls are a community of quirky, mischievous creatures who have lovingly raised an orphaned human boy, whom they named Eggs (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), in the amazing cavernous home they've built beneath the streets of a city called Cheesebridge. The story is about a young orphaned boy raised by underground cave-dwelling trash collectors who tries to save his friends from an evil exterminator, the town's villain, Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley). When Snatcher comes up with a plot to get rid of the Boxtrolls. Eggs decides to venture above ground and "into the light," where he meets and teams up with fabulously feisty Winnifred (Elle Fanning), the mayor's daughter. Together, they devise a daring plan to save The Boxtrolls family.

The animation in The Boxtrolls is fantastic! This was animated by Laika Studios, who also did Coraline, ParaNorman, and were contracted to do Corpse Bride. There is such beautiful subtlety in the characters' movements, from the subtle little facial expressions and eye movements to the insanely complex gestures and action scenes. Everything moves with marvelous fluidity and nonchalance. Even the bounciness of Winnifred's curly hair and swaying of Snatcher's greasy, ropey hair looks remarkably believable and convincing. The characters still have fascinating structure to them. Unlike most characters designed by Tim Burton, not all of the ones in The Boxtrolls are spindly; some are large and bulky, others are small and compact, and there are a few skinny, spindly ones, too. Some of the characters even change size and dimensions. Often when this happens, we're shown a projection of their shadow on a wall as they transform, but here we actually see the transformation in exquisite detail. Even these shots are done with amazing detail as the character struggles to maintain balance while we watch their weight shift significantly. I simply cannot speak highly enough of the animation here.

A complaint I had about the stop motion animation in ParaNorman was the frequent inclusion of some CGI to garnish a particular shot that simply couldn't be done with stop motion animation alone. While these shots and scenes often looked good, it kind of weakens the magic of stop motion animation when there's too much CGI. There was some CGI added here and there in The Boxtrolls, but it wasn't taking center stage. It took the form of clouds of smoke or dust to accent a shot, not take up the whole background as was done in ParaNorman. Minimal use of CGI was beneficial in the end. Most of its implementation was subtle and wouldn't have looked as good without it.

The story here is cute. We have a boy raised by a family of quirky lovable little creatures who are misunderstood, and worlds collide when the boy tries to interact with the people where he's from. Then we've got a token villain who is selfish and wants to exterminate the cute lovable creatures, and our hero has to straddle the line between both worlds to bring peace to both. The Boxtrolls doesn't really do much in the way of originality as far as story goes, it's a classic Hero's Journey story structure that's been used since ancient Greek myth. It's still a fun little story that anyone of any age could get behind, though, and the characters are remarkably charming, if a bit on the simple side.

The theme here seems to be trying to say something meaningful but it gets murky. It seems to be trying to say something about our nature, or how we were born. We're constantly told that characters behave in such a way that is simply in their nature, and they can't really change their circumstances. For example, it is in the nature of the Boxtrolls, themselves, to be passive and hide when there is danger. Eggs doesn't want them to change, but he tries to get them to run for their own safety but can't seem to get them to do it. When the Boxtrolls actually do flee on occasion, there is much applause for changing their nature. But Snatcher is motivated by climbing the social ladder and is actively trying to change his "nature" or circumstance but can't seem to do it. What's the message we're supposed to get from this? There's not even something to suggest that we have the circumstances we're given and we just have to do the best with what we can sort of manage. The murky theme is amusingly explored by Snatcher's henchmen who are frequently discussing the duality of good and evil and pondering whether they are inherently good or evil, and if they even have a choice in the matter. These same henchmen get a funny mid-credits scene where they speculate about giant omnipotent beings controlling everything they do while we actually see the stop motion animators manipulating the puppets for these characters. I'm really not clear what message I was supposed to get from The Boxtrolls, but I can overlook that since the rest of the movie was pretty good.

The Boxtrolls isn't Lakia's best film, but it's still very much enjoyable, as it is packed with enough offbeat wit and visual splendor to offer a healthy dose of all-ages entertainment. Visually, the film is a feast, stuffed with little jokes and surprises and the kind of black humor that Alfred Hitchcock heartily enjoyed, as well as having some painful, groaner puns. The animation is incredible, but the theme is obtuse and confusing. The Boxtrolls moves forward with revolutionary techniques in filmmaking, but mostly stands still as far as theme and story structure goes. It looks great, but no amount of visual trickery or animation genius can make a mediocre story any better than what it is. That said, I still liked The Boxtrolls a great deal, and I think it's worth seeing even if it is on the simple side. I just can't get over how great everything looked! The Boxtrolls is currently streaming on Netflix as of this writing and it's not a bad way to spend an hour and a half. Though there are parts that might be a bit too scary for younger viewers.

The Nightmare Before Christmas Movie Review

I love a good holiday film, but sadly there tends to be so few good ones out there. As far as Halloween goes, there are only a few suitable holiday movies that I've seen which aren't simply slasher horror flicks. One classic that has withstood the test of time is The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).

Halloween Town is a dream world where the citizens are friendly spooks such as deformed monsters, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, vampires, werewolves, and witches. Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon) the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town leads them in a frightful celebration every Halloween, but Jack has grown bored with doing the same thing year after year. While wandering into the forest outside the cemetery, he stumbles upon a portal to "Christmas Town." Jack is so impressed by the feeling and style of Christmas Town that he presents his findings and his somewhat limited understanding of the festivities to Halloween Town. They fail to grasp his meaning and compare everything he says to their idea of Halloween. Jack reluctantly decides to play along and announces that they will take over Christmas. Sally (Catherine O'Hara), a rag doll woman created by the local mad scientist, seems to be the only one who thinks it will end badly. Things do take a turn for the worst when Oogie Boogie (Ken Page) the villainous boogieman sets his creepy sights on abducting Santa Claus.

Tim Burton is frequently, and erroneously, credited for directing Nightmare. Burton was actually the producer and was present only about ten days out of the three years it took to complete the movie. Nightmare was actually directed by Henry Selick who also directed two other amazing stop motion animated movies: James and the Giant Peach and Coraline. Burton did come up with the concept, though. Reportedly, Burton saw a store's Halloween merchandise display being taken down and replaced with a Christmas display, and the juxtaposition sparked his imagination. He then wrote a poem which drew inspiration from the TV Special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas. Burton published and illustrated the poem as a children's book. The concept and design inspiration was all that Burton did, everything else was Selick.

Selick did strive to capture the feel of a Tim Burton movie, and he did such a good job that Burton is often given all the credit. Like many of Burton's films, Nightmare features spindly characters with huge eyes; there are lots of hard angles, spirals, and stripes. This is ironically juxtaposed against the cute and colorful world of Christmas Town. It's like Halloween Town is German Expressionism and Christmas Town is an outrageous Dr. Seuss village. When the two worlds collide, it creates a visually striking setting to tell a pretty funny story with some fun and creative characters. I love it when the Trick-or-Treaters show up at Santa's house.

The stop motion animation in Nightmare is still remarkable even today. Animated movies are often made with computer animation these days. While they are without a doubt fascinating, there's something more physical and organic about good stop motion animation. You can watch a CGI animated movie and even when it's impeccably done, your brain simply recognizes it as being artificially rendered computer images. But with good stop motion you see things that physically exist and that appear to be moving on their own despite how improbable that might be. Nightmare's visual effects and animation at its release was every bit as innovative and revolutionary as Star Wars and Who Framed Roger Rabbit were in their day. Even scenes that look as though they had to be made with computers were, in fact, not. For example, Jack's pet ghost dog, Zero, is transparent and interacts with physical objects. It only makes sense to have Zero be CGI animated, right? In actuality, a complex series of glass and mirrors were used to make the Zero puppet, which was off set, seem to be interacting with other puppets while appearing transparent. The result is amazing.

Part of what makes Nightmare so endearing is the music. Renowned movie composer Danny Elfman provided the score and musical numbers for Nightmare as well as providing the singing voice for Jack. The songs and score are so engaging and memorable that it will keep audiences humming the tunes well after the movie is over. The songs move the story forward and develop the characters while remaining fun to listen to. I hope the Blu-Ray has a sing along version or something. The two songs that have always stuck out to me are "This is Halloween" and "What's This?" They're just so catchy!

 The Nightmare Before Christmas is a cult classic and is still well loved even twenty years after its original release. I can't think of a single time since it hit theaters that merchandise wasn't available somewhere. Walt Disney Pictures has reissued the film annually under their Disney Digital 3-D format since 2006, making it the first stop-motion animated feature to be entirely converted to 3-D. This is the perfect movie for the holiday season, especially since it covers two holidays! Nightmare was originally released under their Touchstone Pictures banner because they thought the film would be too dark and scary for kids; even at PG, I think it might be a bit too scary for kids under the age of 6. But for anyone else it's a classic that shouldn't be missed. I think this is worth owning on Blu-Ray, possibly in 3-D if you can find it.

Here's the "What's This?" song. You can't tell me you don't get caught up in Jack's excitement and wonder.

Disney wanted to make a sequel using computer animation, Burton convinced Disney to drop the idea. "I was always very protective of Nightmare not to do sequels or things of that kind," Burton explained. "You know, 'Jack visits Thanksgiving world' or other kinds of things just because I felt the movie had a purity to it and the people that like it..." Thank goodness for that! But if there was going to be a sequel, what Holiday would you enjoy seeing Jack encounter? Comment below and tell me all about it!