The Boxtrolls (2014)

Eggs (left) with some friends in the darkly funny,
imaginative animated feature "The Boxtrolls."

The weird title characters in “The Boxtrolls”—an exuberant, imaginative and darkly funny animated fantasy directed by Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi and based on the book “Here Be Monsters!” by Alan Snow—get their name because they wear boxes for clothing, pulling them over their midsection and sliding their thin arms through the handle slots as if fashioning makeshift Halloween costumes. The diminutive creatures look like the cartoon cousins of monsters from various live action movies like “Gremlins,” “Ghoulies” and “Critters.”

In a city called Cheesebridge that looks like nineteenth century London, the boxtrolls are forced to live underground because the population thinks they are a malevolent, hungry, snaggle-toothed bunch that steals and devours little children. But one kid, an orphan named Eggs (voiced by Isaac Hempstead-Wright) who grows up with the boxtrolls, knows better.

Indeed, even though the boxtrolls look menacing with their big, glowing yellow eyes, they are mostly harmless, only slightly mischievous and even timid. At night, they emerge from the sewers to forage for discarded items that they bring back to their inventive, artful subterranean world that looks like a cross between Willy Wonka and the “Frankenstein” laboratory. Fish and Shoe, the most prominent of the boxtrolls, are clumsy and childlike, named (hilariously) after items stamped on their boxes.

Meanwhile, an evil opportunist named Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) offers to rid the town of the boxtrolls in exchange for a seat on the exclusive White Hats council headed by the mayor of Cheesebridge, the pompous Lord Portley-Rind (Jared Harris). Later, Portley-Rind’s plucky young daughter Winnie (Elle Fanning), who initially fears the boxtrolls as well, discovers their secret and befriends Eggs. Together, they move to save the misunderstood creatures by convincing the adults that they are peaceful.

The citizens of Cheesebridge all live up to the town's nickname by loving cheese of all kinds, nobody more so than Snatcher, who also happens to be wildly allergic to the stuff, so much that his face swells up like an over-ripe tomato whenever he eats some. As the villain, Snatcher's quirks add up to the right combination of cruel and bumbling.

The impressive look of the film, achieved using a combination of stop motion animation and digital effects, is its best asset. Viewed from a long shot, Cheesebridge appears as a towering, cantilevering mountain, leaning at oblique angles. At street level, the abstract city comes alive with imaginative detail—such as sloping cobblestone streets lined with side-by-side buildings that tilt and curve like sets from a German Expressionist film.

The last act runs on a little long with frenetic mayhem that threatens to drown out the pleasures, but otherwise "The Boxtrolls" is sprightly and consistently entertaining.