OVP: The Boxtrolls (2014)

Film: The Boxtrolls (2014)
Stars: Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Elle Fanning, Ben Kingsley, Toni Collette, Jared Harris, Dee Bradley Baker, Simon Pegg
Director: Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature Film)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

One of the things that I miss in animated films is a clear sense of morality and in particular, a sense of danger surrounding the actions of others.  One of the things that made the films of the 1990's and the Disney Renaissance so intriguing was that there was something moral and fascinating about the characters onscreen.  The Little Mermaid was about the importance of your own voice and not letting vanity take over your own self.  The Lion King is about finding yourself in the harshest of conditions, and rising above your expectations of yourself.  Pocahontas tackled environmentalism and racism.  These are all stories that probably wouldn't be able to be told by Disney today in the same way, even in an era of Frozen making billions of dollars for the company, giving them a pretty long license to do whatever they want.  Thankfully, Laika continues to tell such tales, and in doing so, carries on this lovely tradition.

(Spoilers Ahead) You can see this in the way that the story unfolds, and one of the things I noticed about this film is the care they put in establishing characters and the world these people occupy.  I loved the way that we not only got an introduction to the world of the boxtrolls (creatures that are identified by their boxes, which they use as the equivalent of a Batman utility belt, but are essentially just adorable little creatures who scavenge for metal to keep creating their little underground gizmos), but we also had a clear message of greed surrounding Archibald Snatcher (Kingsley) and Lord Portley-Rind (Harris).  Snatcher uses a tragedy (the kidnapping of a baby) as an excuse to gain more power and to exterminate the innocent boxtrolls in the process.  We find years later that he continues to use fear to control the people of Cheesebridge, enforcing a curfew to keep the citizens from seeing him capturing and torturing the poor boxtrolls, using them as a means to ensure his climbing the social ladder of the town and securing a white hat, an arbitrary status symbol.

This is clearly the sort of (not-so-subtle) messaging that Disney wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole (the fact that Frozen is still a pretty solid metaphor for coming out of the closet still stuns me, though they've shied away from that message in a way that I doubt Laika would).  A power-hungry man using fear to exterminate an entire race of people who are misunderstood?  That sounds like a lot of different genocide tales through history, and we see those illusions frequently throughout The Boxtrolls, with a particularly uncomfortable scene where the townspeople cheer to kills the boxtrolls, even though they're just clever little creatures who haven't actually harmed anyone (as any audience member with half a brain could suspect, the baby that was kidnapped was not in fact kidnapped, but rescued from Archibald Snatch as he was trying to blackmail his father).

The film continues on this way with Eggs, the stolen baby (Hempstead-Wright, best known as Bran on Game of Thrones) trying to rescue his kidnapped friends and along the way befriending a macabre girl named Winnie (Fanning).  There is of course an element of romance to their relationship, but Laika continues to work outside the box and makes them more friends in the end than anything else (Winnie in particular, a girl of singular interests, is in desperate need of a friend).  The better part of this journey is the way that Eggs has to deal with trying to instill a sense of bravery into the boxtrolls.  No one in this film is perfect, which is a nice change of pace from other animated films so intent on making their heroes flawless, and we see the problems with the boxtrolls (they are too meek and too willing to acquiesce for their own good) in addition to the caste system that drove Archibald Leach mad.  The ending unfolds in a relatively expected way (Lord Portley-Rind learns his daughter is more important than material things, Eggs is reunited with his dad, the boxtrolls live above ground in peace with the citizens, and Archibald Leach...well, there's a pretty gross scene involving him that you wouldn't normally get in a Disney film even in the Disney Renaissance-there are places Laika is willing to go that most aren't), but up until the last thirty minutes or so, we've got a complicated story with a terrific set of difficult questions regarding tyranny and what we want to sacrifice in terms of personal freedoms to feel comfortable, and coupling that with a tight script and consistently brilliant animation (this house continues to push the stop-motion button and along with Coraline and Paranorman has created some of the most fascinating animated films in years) we get one of the most thought-provoking animated films I've seen in a while.

Those were my thoughts on The Boxtrolls-what were yours?  Did you like the clear allegory between the film and tyranny?  Do you enjoy Laika's distinctive gruesome-but-gorgeous animation style, or do you find it off-putting?  And where will this film rank in an extremely tight Oscar race for Animated Feature?  Share in the comments!