Finally Fall! It’s a great time to venture back into the theaters with the wee ones in your life, and make sure you do it with as much time as possible before Halloween, because The Boxtrolls are sure to inspire the ‘it’ costumes this year. And for once, they’re inexpensive and easy to make yourself– a cardboard container, a little makeup, and Voila! You’re good to go. No need to spend a small fortune on a trendy, wear-once get up you search out online and wait ’til the last minute to receive.

But Halloween costume inspiration is by no means the film’s greatest virtue. The stop-motion animation flick from the Oregon-based Laika Studios, the same folks who brought you Caroline and ParaNorman, is their best effort yet—a wildly creative offering the whole family will enjoy.

Dark and endearingly creepy, the film tells the tale of the junk recycling imps who live in caverns beneath the streets of a cheese-obsessed, Edwardian British berg. Although the Boxtrolls seem benign enough, the residents live in fear of them, and one man, Archibald Snatcher, voiced by Sir Ben Kingsley, sees the Boxtrolls’ extermination as his ticket to the top of the cheese board. It’s up to a bossy little girl and a boxy little boy to try and bring everyone together in harmony. While Kingsley’s exaggerated accent will prove difficult in places for children (and even adults) to understand, it doesn’t make that much difference, because the animation and art design are so vivid and wondrous you could have a great time simply watching the film, even if there were no sound.

This movie stretches far beyond that tired old plucky-misfit-dreams-big-and-saves-the-day-proving-that-you-can-be-anything-you-want-to-be theme, which is seen far too often in animated films these days, and simply isn’t true. But before I climb on my soap box, just let me just say there IS a deeper message here, but it’s far more subtle, and wrapped up in delightfully skillful silliness.

Make sure you stay all the way to the end, because there’s a very clever depiction of how stop-motion animation is accomplished as the credits roll—one last bonus in a film that is chalk full of them.

Rated PG

1 hour 40 minutes

http://youtu.be/z3eHd87dx6M