Trailer Tuesday: The Boxtrolls

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Well isn't this trailer just lovely?

 For many years growing up I wanted to be a stop-motion animator, and this trailer for animated adventure The Boxtrolls does an exceptional job highlighting the reason for that. The hand-crafted attention to detail in creating a whole other world from scratch - and then bringing it to life - is just magnificent.

As sleek and beautiful as CGI-animated films look (and as much as they shatter box office records by comparison), they do lack the character and quirkiness of so many stop-motion efforts.

The Boxtrolls is the latest from Laika, the same studio behind the deliciously creepy, offbeat Coraline and subversive ParaNorman. Like Coraline, The Boxtrolls is a novel adaptation, taking the illustrated novel Here Be Monsters! and bringing it to the big screen... although evidently in very loose form.

The Boxtrolls is set in England of the 19th Century, and centres on a orphan who is taken in and raised by an exceptionally shy band of trolls who run around in cardboard boxes and live in the sewers beneath the horribly polluted industrial city. At some point the boy's loyalty to his adoptive family is called into question.


The vocal cast of The Boxtrolls includes Ben Kingsley as the film's Big Bad, Elle Fanning, Toni Collette and the loveable comedic duo of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

I can guarantee that The Boxtrolls won't be to everyone's taste but at this early stage it certainly does look special. I'm in!

The Boxtrolls releases in 3D in North America on 26 September next year. The film's South African release date has yet to be set.

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