The Boxtrolls

So I saw The Boxtrolls and I thought it was an OK kids movie, but it was missing something for me. I really liked the boxtrolls themselves, and enjoyed the look we got into their world but the rest of the movie left me kind of cold.

I was really thrown off by the design of most of the adult characters in the movie. I mean it's clearly a conscious decision on the filmmakers' part but the adults were all unrelentingly ugly and off-putting to me, to the point that it was just really distracting.

On the upside the dialog is generally pretty funny. There's a running gag where Richard Ayoade and Nick Frost as two of the villain's evil henchmen have a series of existential conversations about whether they actually are evil henchmen or not, like an extended version of the Mitchell and Webb "Are we the baddies?" sketch. Also Ben Kingsley is pretty good voicing the main villain, though I found his character hard to look at.

With a mix of low humor and your standard "don't judge misfits and outsiders just because they're different" storyline this seems like it'd be a great movie for kids, but I don't know if there's enough there for grownups. At least there wasn't for this one.