With 79 sets and over 20,000 handmade props, The Boxtrolls is the biggest production ever to be made in stop-motion animation; and is only the fourth stop-motion movie to be made in stereoscopic 3D following LAIKA’s own Coraline (2009) and ParaNorman (2012) as well as Aardman’s The Pirates! (2012).

An Ast of Motion Picture

An art form that began at the dawn of the motion picture, the stop-motion animation process was, is, and always will be uniquely enthralling – one of the most magical aspects of a medium capable of flights of fancy.

Single frame by single frame (and there are 24 frames per second in a motion picture), animators subtly and painstakingly manipulate tangible objects (characters, props, sets, etc.) on a working stage. Each frame is photographed for the motion picture camera – twice, if the camera is a 3D one as on the movies that animation studio LAIKA makes. When the thousands of photographed frames are edited and projected together sequentially, the characters and environment come alive. Movie magic is created by hand.

The Boxtrolls producer and lead animator Travis Knight notes, “Stop-motion animation is a very elementary process. You merely move an object and take a picture – simple. But, like most things that are simple, it’s just about the hardest thing in the world to do well.”

Synopsis

The Boxtrolls is a comedic fable that unfolds in Cheesebridge, a posh Victorian-era town obsessed with wealth, class and the stinkiest of fine cheeses. Beneath its charming cobblestone streets dwell the Boxtrolls, foul monsters who crawl out of the sewers at night and steal what the townspeople hold most dear: their children and their cheeses. At least that’s the legend residents have always believed.

In truth, the Boxtrolls are an underground cavern-dwelling community of quirky and lovable oddballs who wear recycled cardboard boxes the way turtles wear their shells. The Boxtrolls have raised an orphaned human boy, EGGS (voiced by Isaac Hempstead-Wright), since infancy as one of their dumpster-diving and mechanical junk-collecting own. When the Boxtrolls are targeted by a villainous pest exterminator ARCHIBALD SNATCHER (Acadamy Award winner Ben Kingsley) who is bent on eradicating them as his ticket to Cheesebridge society, the kind-hearted band of tinkerers must turn to their adopted charge and an adventurous rich girl WINNIE (Elle Fanning) to bridge two worlds amidst the winds of change – and cheese.

The Boxtrolls

Directed by:                 

Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi

Produced by:             

Travis Knight, David Ichioka

Written by:

Irena Brignull

Based on the novel:   

“Here Be Monsters” by Alan Snow

Cast:

Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Elle Fanning,Ben Kingsley, Simon Pegg

Language:                 

English (w/ Chi. subtitles & Cantonese dubbed version)

Running Time:            　97 mins

Rating:                           I