User reviews

We took our 3 year old son to this film, and was not expecting much entertainment for us adults. However, both my wife and I really enjoyed it and my son has been walking around in a bottomless box with holes cut in it,(for his head and arms),for two days.

It has a lot of charm and a slight edge of darkness. I am surprised that it has received such poor reviews from the critics. I have noticed they tend to rate realistic, depressing films; whereas we like happy escapist fun and this film delivers that.

We are from the UK and the voices are perhaps better known here, which may have contributed, a little, to our perception of this film's charm.

For the potential viewers of this film, don't worry if you didn't read the book Here Be Monsters! first. The Boxtrolls movie stands on its own as an excellent story wrapped in visuals that pay homage to the craft of stop motion animation. It's funny, clever, gross, a bit cheeky, and a bit dark. Everything kids and many adults who accompany them or with others in the age group will enjoy. Whether it will be a classic or not, is hard to say.

The Boxtrolls are, well, basically trolls that have boxes they use as clothes and safety. They are a modest and timid sort. They are also industrious and like all kinds of gadgets. Since the story takes place around the time of the Industrial Revolution, there is no shortage of gears, crankshafts, bolts, wheels, or any manner of metal part they try to put to some other use. They also are good at babysitting. None more so than Fish and Shoe, the two de facto fathers of one young boy that goes by the name of Eggs (it should be noted that their names are the names of the boxes they wear).

Without getting into too much detail about the origins of their young charge, these three along with the other Boxtrolls have been labeled as kidnapping, baby eating, monsters by the fine townfolk of Cheesebridge. Led by the elite White Hats and their leader Lord Portly-Rind (Jared Harris) and the upwardly mobile Red Hat Archie Snatcher (Ben Kingsley), they have vowed to eradicate their hamlet of the Boxtroll vermin. The only thing more important than accomplishing this task is their love of all types of cheese. Some of the funniest and strangest scenes of the film is the discussions and consumption of cheese by the ruling class and the aforementioned Mr. Snatcher.

Besides a wonderful voice acting performance by Sir Kingsley, The Boxtrolls is full of great turns. Two of Mr. Snatch's henchmen Mr. Pickles and Mr. Trout, (Richard Ayoade and Nick Frost, respectively) offer up metaphysical and philosophical commentary musings about life and their career choices. On the other hand, the overzealous Mr. Gristle (Tracy Morgan) is a man of few words, rather letting his actions do the talking. Elle Fanning (Maleficent) and Isaac Hempstead Wright (Game Of Thrones) are a perfect match as Winnie, the daughter of Lord Portly-Rind and Eggs. She teaches him how to act in public, while he indulges her thirst for all things creepy and crawly.

The look of The Boxtrolls can be summed up in one word: amazing. Not in a super saturated color, larger than life way, but in a painstakingly meticulous, attention to detail way. Although the film is in 3d and might lose something when viewed on a smaller screen, the skill, reverence and affection the animation/modeling team poured into the sets and characters, along with top shelf screen writing and acting make this film one of the best animated features to come out in quite a while.

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This film is recommended.

The Boxtrolls, a well-crafted stop motion animation film combined with the latest CGI advances, is an entertaining but somewhat safer and slightly sanitized film from Laika, the same studio that delivered Coraline and ParaNorman, two earlier children's film with a twisted Gothic edge. A pleasant antidote to the cheery Disney fare regularly served to the young set, the film is diverting fun.

There are still twists and turns in the film but it's less of a giddy roller coaster ride than expected. Based on Alan Snow's novel, Here Be Monsters, the darker tone of the book has been substantially altered and lightened up for a more crowd-pleasing effect, although there are some grotesque moments that may frighten the little ones.

Moviegoers are immediately transported to the dingy squalor of brick factories and small shoppes that line the cobblestone streets of Dicken's Ole Victorian London town, or, in this case, renamed Cheesebridge. The upper and lower class live here, both in fear of the Boxtrolls, a lower lower subspecies that dwell underground who are part monster, part cardboard. Living amidst them is Eggs, an abandoned child who was lovingly raised by these creatures that roam the night to recycle the discarded refuse left by people. They avoid human contact as much as possible. Who can blame them! There is the haughty and aristocratic Lord and Lady Portley-Rind, their inquisitive and precocious daughter, Winnie, and especially Archibald Snatcher, a scheming and hateful villain whose main goal is to do away with all Boxtrolls!

As with most animated films nowadays, the visual elements are far superior to the narrative story. The Boxtrolls are not the exception. While the script has some clever dialog, an involving tale, and its charming characters, the plot becomes too formula-driven and conventional. The screenplay by Irena Brignull and Adam Pava relies too heavily on slapstick and chase sequences rather than developing any deep characterizations. The Boxtrolls themselves lack any real distinctive personalities and that British droll humor is in short supply. Everything seems a tad too predictable and ordinary, except for the artistry of the filmmakers and their wonderful details with the elaborate settings, steam-punk gadgetry, and off-beat characters. Special kudos to the remarkable production design by Paul Lasaine.

The voice-over work by the actors (Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Elle Fanning, Jared Harris, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Tracy Morgan) is highly accomplished and adds even more joy to the film, especially with Sir Ben Kingley's marvelous line delivery as the nasty baddie who completely steals the film. (In fact, Archibald is more interesting than our hero, Eggs, at least, as viewed in this film adaptation. Kingsley has created one of the best animated villains in years, although part of his great performance pays direct homage to Dame Edna.)

Directors Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi painstakingly create a unique world of grime and clutter. They also allow the surreal elements to emerge to maximum effect, particularly in the underground sequences. Though the film lacks some cohesiveness in its story-telling, The Boxtrolls, more often than not, does think outside the box. With all its creative energy and technical inventiveness on display, even Roald Dahl would be proud. GRADE: B

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There are cute children's films - like "Frozen, the first movie to which I ever took my granddaughter (then just under three) - and then there is the more challenging kind - like "The Boxtrolls" to which I took her nine months later. We haven't read the source material, the novel "Here Be Monsters!" by Alan Snow, but she knows all about trolls from "Frozen" and other stories and these are very cleverly represented through stop- motion capture by the specialist production company Laika. But it's a little bit scary for young ones, so my granddaughter held on to my hand most of the film and sat on my lap for the final third.

For British adults of a certain age, the characters of the town of Cheesebridge look like people from a Gerald Scarfe cartoon and the subterranean habitat of the boxtrolls themselves is like a cross between the worlds of Heath Robinson and Hieronymus Bosch. The voices are very well-done and for me the best of comes from Ben Kingsley as a hard bad guy and Richard Ayoade as a soft bad guy. Stay for the credits when early on there is a little bit of existential angst on display from two of the stop motion characters.

If you haven't yet seen 'Coraline' or 'ParaNorman', it may take you a while to get used to the world of 'The Boxtrolls'. The third feature from Oregon-based studio Laika Animation, it is told using the same stop-motion technique (with some CG and hand-drawn work) as their earlier films, but the similarity doesn't quite stop there. Yes, once again, the animators have eschewed the cuteness of Disney or Dreamworks for something much darker than your normal kiddie fare at the Cineplex, and therein, we would argue, is the reason why it proves so uniquely charming.

Adapted from British children's author Alan Snow's fantasy adventure 'Here Be Monsters!', it retains the Steampunk setting of the novel but takes quite a few creative liberties. Instead of an over- industrialised Ratbridge, the city in question is Cheesebridge, so termed because the dairy product is what separates the rich in "White Hats" from the poor in red ones. What unites the humans across their class distinctions is the subterranean Boxtrolls, little blue- skinned fluorescent-eyed creatures who emerge from the sewers at night to swipe anything and everything they can get their hands on.

So named on account of the cupboard boxes they wear their bodies, the Boxtrolls are feared by the humans as much they fear the humans. The fear of the former is stoked by none other than Archibald Snatcher (voiced by Ben Kingsley), a truly detestable rascal who is responsible for spreading nasty rumours about the Boxtrolls in order to justify his eradication for a coveted place with the "White Hats" and a seat with them at the cheese tasting table. As you can probably guess, their leader is no saint either, but rather a self- absorbed aristocrat by the name of Lord Portley-Rind who cares more about his Gouda and Brie than the welfare of his citizenry.

It's a lot of setup, but co-directors Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable deftly lay out the intricacies of their make-believe world while setting the narrative in motion. For reasons only revealed in a crucial flashback sequence later, a boy is taken as a toddler under the care of the Boxtrolls and is named Eggs after the carton he wears over himself. While on the prowl one night, Eggs runs into Lord Portley's precocious daughter Winnifred (Elle Fanning) who is shocked that a human would be associating himself with the dreaded Boxtrolls; but before she can make his acquaintance, Eggs is forced to flee from Archibald and his henchmen.

As such stories go, Eggs sets off on a quest with Winnifred in tow to convince the humans that the Boxtrolls aren't sinister beings who kidnap children. To top it off, Archibald turns out to have a nefarious scheme after all, building a contraption to assert his authority over Lord Portley and demanding that he be given the latter's white hat. But parents need not worry - writers Irena Brignull and Adam Pava don't deny the kids of a happy ending, though not before subjecting them to some grotesque images that may just make them swear off cheese for some time.

Consider this as fair warning - visually, this isn't cast in the same mould as the usual CG animation, and one might even go as far as to say that 'The Boxtrolls' operates in a realm of ugliness. But once you look past the cruder-than-usual designs, you're likely to find the cardboard-wearing critters surprisingly endearing by their guile and naivety. We urge you too to pay attention to the dazzling production design that makes up the world of Cheesebridge and the underground lair in which the boxtrolls call home; there is a whole cornucopia of details that will leave you wowed if you pay attention to them.

Still, compared to their earlier features, this latest lacks the heart and poignancy that made its predecessors memorable. Eggs never comes across as someone whose plight we would sympathise with, nor for that matter is Winnifred a likable enough character. The way the boxtrolls communicate in an Ewok-like language is amusing all right, but they are lacking individually in any defining personality. Because we never quite understand the reason why the humans so fear the boxtrolls, their eventual reconciliation doesn't quite resonate as it should.

It isn't that 'The Boxtrolls' is underwhelming though; against a surfeit of clean-cut CG animation, its stop-motion aesthetics make it a refreshing change of look. Rather, because its earlier two adventures were such singular accomplishments, Laika's latest seems more like a walk in the park. Yet its refusal to be boxed in (pun intended) by conventional animation features is still evident in its design as well as its choice of themes, and if there ever were need to prove that it is possible to be both grotesque and charming at the same time, then 'The Boxtrolls' would be it.

'The Boxtrolls' has parts that I like, but overall I found it slow-moving.

I enjoyed the Boxtrolls themselves, I like how they look and come across. Archibald (Ben Kingsley) and bodyguards, Messrs Trout (Nick Frost) and Pickles (Richard Ayoade), are good, as is the casting of Jared Harris as Lord Charles Portley-Rind.

With that said, I liked them individually rather than as a group. Frost and Ayoade being the key examples, despite being two of the same character I never felt a connection between them. Elsewhere, I rate Isaac Hempstead Wright and Elle Fanning as actors, but I don't feel like their voices suit the respective roles of Eggs and Winnie.

The stop-motion animation is strong, but I just feel the plot is brought to life in a sluggish manner; the ending particularly felt dragged out to me. All in all, it's an average film in my eyes.

The film Boxtrolls is so jam packed with themes that cut to the core of our society that you might expect it to be cobbled together, choppy, overreaching, and pretentious. It is, in fact, none of those things.

A thoroughly entertaining, not too cerebral, romp down one box conveyor after another, the film succeeds at wrapping it's central theme of persecution and prejudice in layers of equally significant ideas: group self-identification, class ambition, dalliant obsessions, self-esteem, and self-destructive addiction. It follows a nicely predictable plot arc that will satisfy your children while you ponder whether the plucky heroine's ostensible obsession with the macabre is likely a reflection of a Freudian complex with roots in her father's indifference. The bad guy with his crooked teeth and greazy hair is unmistakably evil. But at the same time the good guys aren't wearing the white hats. In fact, it's comparing and poking fun at both incompetence and maliciousness.

The animation finds it's grounding in a setting that is reminiscent of Corpse Bride. From the industrial green palate of the box trolls to the stiff and starched characterization of the patrician class, the visual design of the film holds together well.

After the film you'll walk out of the theater with lots of things on your mind, but you won't be walking out with a child who was bored to sleep or fits by another didactic feature of animated hogwash. That is an impressive achievement for any film.

The Boxtrolls is a unique movie. The animation alone makes it worth watching. It's not as humorous as other animated features, but it has a certain cleverness throughout the movie. The voice acting is also well done - the actors must have had a fun time doing it. This is a simple story that kids and parents can enjoy.

The "animation" genre now has a common trait: it is known for broader gags, bullet speed pacing, and eye candy visuals, but out of many animation studios out there, Laika Entertainment could be the only one that stays loyal to their own direction. Aside of the stop- motion animation and love to the horror movie camp, their storytelling and themes are equally unconventional, though charmingly daring at best. The Boxtrolls is no different from their last two movies, except this one might be gentler, but the strangeness is still there intact. And by those merit, the experience becomes special.

It might get immediately be assumed that the film has the same moral of 2012's ParaNorman. It does have that feeling: strange people being treated as outcasts by everybody and describes their fear to them out of caricatures. But the film tends to explore more messages beneath besides of that, if you can get behind with the whole rescue plan stuff, you may also get to notice that it's really about separating people's common views and expectations from the reality; like the Boxtrolls they're against with aren't actually bad creatures, or some fathers turn out to be not as supportive as they're supposed to be, or even the difference between being good and bad. The sentiment may sound a little familiar, but the delivery here is often steady and bitter to acknowledge its sincerity, and it indeed makes it remarkable.

As for the animation, there's no hiding for the love of the horror movie aesthetics. The world already looks magnificently whimsical as the filmmakers transcend their stop-motion animating abilities by making grander and crazier set pieces and physical comedy, but when it comes to featuring its creature and character designs, the camp just brings lots of it to life, some parent might find it a little creepy for smaller children, but if they don't even bother then there is no denying how beautiful they're designed anyway. In another angle, it offers a larger extent of warmth compared to many family movies today. The nearly wordless montage of the Boxtroll Fish raising young Eggs is one of the sweetest things you would see in recent memory, while the sadder montage at the middle act could surprisingly be affecting. These storytellers just know how to drive emotions. Among the voice actors, Ben Kingsley predictably becomes the best. He brings the main pizazz as both the villain and his hilarious drag disguise. Isaac Hempstead Wright and Elle Fanning are great as well, giving their characters the personalities they need. There are more big names (mentioning the favorites like Simon Pegg and Richard Ayoade) that bring the extra fun of the film.

The Boxtrolls is probably going to be the least attraction for the animation genre this year, mostly because it's nearly apart from the comfort zone of today's entertainment. If you don't care about trends, then this movie is a treat, and as usual from its studio, the overall film is dark, campy, but visually stunning and eventually endearing. They still haven't changed and I hope it always stays that way, especially the monster movie tribute and strong heart and perspective towards things. The Boxtrolls proves that these types of animated films shouldn't be antique yet, there is a huge value to its quality and moviegoers should once again encounter it.

This film has some brilliantly detailed animation. All the scenes and characters are unique and not generic by any form. The box trolls especially are so ridiculous looking but at the same time absolutely adorable. They have this Gollum vibe yet thankfully they don't seem sociopathic.

It's quite a morbid movie really and not at all what I was expecting. The human characters are ruthless and their behaviours are disgraceful. They're actually quite idiotic which makes the movie hard to enjoy.

In the end I got out of it what I was wanting but the whole thing didn't capture my imagination. All in all it was an okay movie.

This mix of stop-motion and CGI brings a fun, charming tale that appeals to all ages.

Set in the town of Cheesebridge (it's motto - a gouda place to live), the 'minion'-like creatures called boxtrolls have for years terrorised the habitants and are hunted by childcatcher-esque exterminator 'Archibald Snatcher', voiced by Sir Ben Kingsley, who has been promised a place in the town council if he's destroys every last one. The story is enjoyable, heartwarming and is really brought alive by the stop motion animation and topped by a plethora of famous British voices.

The themes are a little darker than explored in a lot of younger-aimed films, and there is a sense of adventure and danger that you don't see in the majority of animations. But this doesn't mean that it isn't entertaining. Those who are fond of the Despicable Me's minions, will love the Boxtrolls' actions and personalities, resulting in many lighthearted moments too.

For those that have seen creator Laika's other works - Coraline and Paranorman - you will enjoy this very much. They don't have as much of a fan base as the biggest stop motion Aardman - the visionaries behind Wallace & Gromit, but their quirkier, darker animations can appeal to a larger range of audiences. Here, with their third film, they have made really enjoyable film, entertaining from beginning to end. Be sure to stay at the end for a little credit sting showing how it was made.

Coming after their brilliant Coraline and fun filled ParaNorman, the latest Claymation flick from Laika Entertainment doesn't quite reach the heights of its ancestors. As always, the meticulous stop motion animation is wondrous to watch and, for the cineastes in the audience, appreciating the painstaking effort is a pleasure in its own right. Yet there's a spark missing from The Boxtrolls that stops it transitioning from appreciated art to an outright enjoyable movie. The story – the harmless, underground-dwelling creatures of the title are being ruthlessly exterminated, causing the boy they raised from birth to stand up for them – just doesn't have the legs necessary for a 90 minute outing, nor does it offer up enough laughs for what is meant to be a dark comedy. Another problem is that the preposterously stereotypical characters all act the exact way you would expect (Ben Kingsley's sneering, oily scoundrel Archibald Snatcher is particularly uninteresting), leaving no room for surprise or genuine affection. Hence all the heavy lifting is left to the superb stop motion animation, a few choice chase sequences and cheeky visual references; enough to keep you impressed but only intermittently entertained.

Wonderful stop-motion animation, great story, and acted very well. I don't understand the negative reviews, if you want Disney, go watch Disney. Darker stuff like this is amazing and we definitely don't get enough of it.

The Boxtrolls may be Laika's weakest movie, but they deliver visually impressive movies with lots of creative effort put into them every time.

This is the kind of movie you have to see to believe. Yes, the central plot may be predictable, but the world it is set in is so enjoyably weird that you can't help smiling.

Aside from the imaginative world, we get a handful of characters who, honestly, are a mixed bag. Our main character, Eggs, started off promising as an abducted baby raised by the boxtrolls with whom he builds fun gadgets from junk found in the streets above.

But an evil exterminator, Snatcher, has sworn to rid the town of the trolls to get a position among the higher-ups. He is so enjoyably evil and brought to life magnificently by Ben Kingsley who gave his all to secure him a place as the most memorable character in the movie.

I say that, because after we get acqainted with the other main character Winnie, we end up with a fish-out-of-water story in which Eggs must reveal Snatcher's plan to save the his troll family. Not a terrible plot, but seen before. That mixed up with mostly forgettable characters with Snatcher being the exception dragged the movie down a notch.

Again, still worth watching just for the animation and Snatcher!

The Boxtrolls is the third outing for stop motion studio Laika, and it retains the amazing craftsmanship seen in their previous films.

The animation used in the Boxtrolls technically exceeds any other stop motion film I have seen before, with some extremely captivating shots throughout. The world they have created is extremely grimy and intricate, and like every other aspect of the film, is full of little details that keep your eyes locked to the screen. All of the characters that inhabit this world are equally interesting, each individually quirky and charismatic. The story itself, while fairly simple, is effective, often aided by snappy, humorous dialogue. To top the movie off is clever message strung throughout the film.

The Boxtrolls is a must see for its visual excellence, great dialogue and touching message; what other kids movies have lines like "rivers of blood" and "piles of baby bones".

4/5

Based on Alan Snow's children novel "Here Be Monsters", The Boxtrolls follows in the eerie and murky footsteps of Coraline and Paranorman for an animated caper with more quirkiness than a Come Dine With Me at Tim Burton's house.

Isaac Hempstead Wight voices "Eggs", a boy who grew up under the streets by a group of box-wearing trolls, who roam the streets at night finding anything they can to make into useful devices. Deemed a menace and a scourge, the city employs The Red Hats, a team of brutal Boxtroll-catching goons led by Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) - a ruthless and ambitious tyrant, who hopes to climb the social hierarchy in order to swap his red hat for a white one.

White Hats are the political strata of society, the decision-makers, who spend more time scoffing cheese in the Tasting Room than providing any worthwhile contribution to the town of Cheesebridge. When a White Hat's daughter, Winnie (Elle Fanning), falls in with The Boxtrolls and Eggs, the town becomes the setting for a rough-and-tumble adventure as the gang attempt to find and free the Boxtrolls who have been taken by the Red Hats.

Fun, funky, and full of creative freedom, The Boxtrolls delivers a meatier and more enjoyable family film than its predecessors, with a spectacular cast of voices, and some of the best animation in years. It is lively, perfectly-timed, and some of the weightier themes will keep even the snobbiest of film-watchers interested. The film delivers commentary on very relevant class issues and green themes, whilst keeping them tucked under a bombastic and explosive film for families.

The Boxtrolls themselves are like ugly Minions, speaking an incomprehensible dialect of baffling gibberish, whilst looking petrified by the harsh realities of human interaction. They are, in fact, more appealing than Minions as they each have subtle differences (like the one with false teeth, or the one with anger issues), and varying boxes - such as Fish or Eggs.

Just as The Boxtrolls roam the streets recycling garbage into new and useful things, the film itself has recycled some of its makers' past imagery (wouldn't quite call it garbage, although Paranorman tested this particular reviewer) and created a late summer film that thinks outside the box.

The Boxtrolls

Only infants and the homeless can find value in discarded cardboard boxes.

However, according to this animated movie trolls also appreciate consumer packaging.

Cheesebridge is being terrorized by a subterranean species dubbed The Boxtrolls by the terrified residents on account they wear old boxes for clothes.

Rumoured to consume babies, the Lord of Cheesebridge (Jared Harris) employs a psychotic exterminator (Ben Kingsley) and his crew (Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade, Tracy Morgan) to eradicate the Boxtrolls.

Unbeknownst to everyone in the town, except the Lord's daughter (Elle Fanning), a human boy (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) is living amongst the Boxtrolls and fighting to save them from extinction.

Dark, disgusting and slightly demented, this mature stop-motion adaptation of the children's book Here Be Monsters doesn't shy away from the gross, morbid things that kids revel in. While its' eye-catching animation is a visual delight.

Mind you, hungry trolls can be the solution to homelessness.

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A good metaphor for the movie itself: if you can stomach it, it's a real delicacy, with plenty of interesting themes. The steam-punk early-modern Dutch city inhabited by well-meaning but persecuted trolls was a disquieting environment with multiple filthy (physically and morally) areas that Laika's unique animation explored in various engaging and surprising ways.

My 6-year-old son Sebastian loved it, mostly, I think, because it was disgusting and had plenty of gross jokes and scenes (like the naked trolls who take city hall at the end), but he also got a little tired of it, declaring : "I thought it's never going to end."

Sienna's Rating: 7 Stars Sebastian's Rating: 10 Stars!

Paul's Rating: 7 Stars.

This movie clearly motivates itself around good vs. evil and Nazi/holocaust plot themes, but the delivery is poor due to the overuse of 4th-wall breaking meta-dialog, which involves characters that are supposed to be dumb underlings talking intellectually/philosophically about their misgiving in their role in the lead character's scheme.

A better script would have shown occasional pangs of guilt or confusion in an otherwise clueless character, offering more emotion and subtlety and inviting empathy on the part of the audience. Instead, the overwrought dialog is too on-the-nose for adults, yet too complex for children. The lead villain (Snatcher) is simultaneously quite brilliant yet also remarkably dense at times (such as in the first cheese-eating incident, where the henchman run intellectual rings around him, for some unmotivated reason). I suppose this conjures up old Gargamel (Smurfs), who plays this duality brilliantly in the original cartoons, but it somehow doesn't play well here.

The henchmen characters also make frequent references to the story as if they were outside of it. This is an inside joke for the writers, presumably, but it's really not all that funny for the rest of us. Nothing is gained by taking us out of the story experience; the joke is stale (and not cleverly executed).

The animation is wonderful, however, and I believe it's actually stop-motion, not computer animation, which makes it really phenomenal.

One of their best features!!! Highly recommend for the whole family of all ages!!!! I have personally watched this movie plus different times and would definitely watch it 10 more. Such an inspirational movie to watch! Definitely the top choice for moving night with the whole family and friends of all ages! Inspirational thing about this movie is that it's noticed that someone isn't as he was brought up to believe that he was and is shown and taught that he is just like any other boy. So once again please watch and comment with a review. There will be absolutely zero percent of regrets if decided to choose this movie to watch! My apologies about rambling but 00 characters are needed in order to post a review! Watch it! Love it! Live it!!

The uneven yet entirely unique style of stop motion takes years to master, and takes almost as long to actually make a feature film with it. When stop motion films finally do enter theaters, they tend to fall short at the box office in comparison to their hand drawn and computer generated counterparts. Even still, they have die-hard fanatics across the globe acclaiming them for their charm, wit, social commentary, and delightfully dark tone.

That being said, I have no idea what audience "The Boxtrolls" is trying to target. Based on the story "Here Be Monsters!" by Alan Snow, the third animated feature from Laika Studios has bucket loads of humor, incredible animation, dark flavors and important morals, all of which are blown entirely out of proportion.

In the town of Cheesebridge, after the cheese-obsessed snobbery of high society goes to sleep, blue skinned inventors named Boxtrolls roam the night, looking for parts to use for their ingenious contraptions below the city. When the town pest exterminator Archibald Snatcher captures more and more Boxtrolls, it is up to Eggs (voiced by Isaac Hempsted Wright), a boy raised by Boxtrolls, to rescue his fellow gremlins and bridge the gap between humans and Boxtrolls.

The most annoying aspect regarding "The Boxtrolls" is that the filmmakers had everything in their favor. Every frame floods with visual splendor, almost every joke hits a home run, and the opening setup should allow for the film to exert radiant charm. All of these elements remain in the final product, yet relentless stop-motion grotesqueness overshadows them. The directors get so caught up with taking a traditional, basic story and making it their own that they remove any subtlety the movie might have had, abusing the powers of stop-motion more than once along the way. Most of the unpleasantness hails from the villain Archibald Snatcher, voiced by the great Ben Kingsley. Both Kingsley and the animators work to create a disgustingly flamboyant villain among the lines of the child catchers from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," yet the tipsy camera movements and sickly design of the character lead to the most revolting villainous concoction since Terl from "Battlefield Earth." In one scene where Snatcher sings anti-Boxtroll propaganda as his cross dressed alter-identity Madam Frou-Frou, I felt my stomach tighten in a way that it hasn't felt since I saw two minutes of "The Human Centipede." The dark environment works some scenes, yet for others, it goes on for way too long.

For a film that attempts to satirize the posh ridiculousness of upper class culture, "The Boxtrolls" unfortunately decides to bask in obviousness. Knowing that this movie was made for kids, I expected some sort of moral regarding prejudice or equality. I really hoped that it would not have to come from some kid standing on a box (pun intended) yelling "They're not the monsters, you are!" or something like that. For ten minutes. With another third act to go. One of the reoccurring jokes comes from Snatchers henchmen, who loaf on their job to break the fourth wall over and over again. The simple irony only became more and more irritating each time it occurred. I never have liked the phrase "It's only a kid's movie" as an excuse to dismiss lazy writing, and it certainly shouldn't apply to a movie that should have been far more astute.

Speaking of children, I am sure that there will be many angry parents whose kids started having nightmares because of this movie, insisting that it is a menace to healthy growth in children. While I won't say that this movie should be called a "kids film," you should take your kids anyways as long as they are able to speak properly. If not, you might want to wait a couple of years.

"The Boxtrolls" has some serious flaws, mainly it's inherent ugliness and obvious writing. Even so, it remains hilarious, visually spectacular, and highly imaginative. Those who crave the dark and edgy unapologetically will certainly not be disappointed.

Coraline is one of my favorite movies. It had a sort of dark comedy to it but this is definitely NOT in that category to me. This was just dark, bordering on sadistic.

I took my 7 year old son and thought this would be a good movie but instead several times I found myself questioning whether this was something he needed to be watching.

The evil characters in this movie are a bit too evil - one especially makes you feel like he could star in the cartoon version of Hostel. The cruelty to the trolls and the children was uncomfortable to watch. I think I laughed maybe once. Most times I was wincing or feeling like I was on the verge of tears. Things that were off putting to me: They show the evil villain swinging to kill the boys dad with a large wrench, a troll and later the boy are put in a cage, boy's dad chained upside down for a "decade" who keeps repeating "jelly" because his brain is not right, chasing a child with a bat and swinging to hit them several times, making jokes about killing the boy because he won't be still then aiming and firing the gun, trolls hit and kicked in their boxes, trolls put in a box crusher machine, and holding a child chained over a fire (even if the outcome didn't happen) was just too intense.

I don't want to even get started on the cheese eating episodes. That part could have played out funny but he was made to be so grotesque. Then when he stretches out his tongue across the screen to eat the cheese twice its just disgusting. Throwing leaches on his face to get the blood swelling out was just beyond strange. Plus the "hostel" guy was so thrilled to be get the leeches to throw on him in secret.

So not to be all negative I did like the animation. The box trolls are adorable.