laika

It’s somewhat strange for me to say that I have a favourite kind of animation. It depends on the individual film, on the individual artists. I love Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away and Porco Rosso and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. I love the vibrant, expressive, always surprising computer animation of the Spider-Verse films as much as that of WALL-E with its Roger Deakins-like, classically handsome lighting and cinematography. I love Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant, the Looney Tunes classics, the medieval inspirations of Cartoon Saloon’s The Secret of Kells and Wolfwalkers. The styles and techniques with which these films were made were meaningful choices, and they were the right choices.

There are films I love in all kinds of animation. But if I did have to choose a favourite between these styles and techniques, I would have to say it’s stop motion.

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I’m a big fan of Laika. No, not the space-faring dog so much as the animation company responsible for Coraline, ParaNorman and, most recently, Kubo and the Two Strings, one of my favourite films of 2016. Their loving dedication to the art of stop-motion animation tends to combine with their ability as storytellers and their oddball imagination to strange and wonderful effects, making their films distinctly different from Pixar’s beautiful but more sentimental fare, and elevating them far beyond other contenders with their well-rehearsed snark and pop culture references. I’d avoided The Boxtrolls to date, mainly because I’d heard that it was distinctly lesser Laika – and now, having caught it on TV, I would probably agree that it’s nowhere near the top of my list of Laika favourites, but it is still a great example of the company’s craftsmanship. The film, loosely based on Alan Snow’s 2006 children’s book Here Be Monsters!, combines the early Victoriana of Charles Dickens’ novels with the dark and sometimes gleefully gruesome humour of Roald Dahl – and hinting at even darker and more surreal entertainments such as the films of Monty Python.

The Boxtrolls