The Boxtrolls 4K 2014 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

Together with a family of funny monsters, an orphan boy lives in the underground catacombs. His clothes are now replaced by an ordinary box, but every night he can walk around the dark city and inspire fear in the ordinary inhabitants. One day the boy meets a charming little girl who will help the monsters cope with the evil aristocrat who has declared a hunt for them.

Review 4K Movie

Studio Laika does not betray its traditions, continuing to please fans of unusual and gloomy stories in September of this year. This time new, but no less original and charismatic characters join the ranks of "Coraline", "Paranorman" and "Corpse of the Bride" characters.

The viewer sees a wonderful world, represented by the small town of Syrburg and its inhabitants. Although marvelous is certainly a bit of an acquired taste, because the town is inhabited by not so attractive people as the notorious cute little trolls, the red-haired Winnie and the boy Eggs, who is just convinced that he is also a little troll. The town is terrorized by a typically cartoonish villain with a talking surname, Khvatkins, who longs to exterminate all the Korobiaks and get the coveted white hat, a symbol of the highest position in town, as well as a trio of his not-so-successful henchmen. In the background, the members of the town council, merchants, musicians and other ladies and gentlemen complete the picture beautifully.

During the daytime Syrburg lives life to the fullest, but at night there is an almost deadly silence in the streets, and all because of the curfew imposed on the city. And how else, because under the ground live horrible korobyaks, which, according to stubbornly supported rumors, eat only children, and adults do not despise. An example of this - a sad fate of the family Tropsho, on the motives of which on holidays for the residents staged theatrical performances. But one day, or rather one night, everything amazingly begins to change...

In our age of computer animation, when puppet cartoons become, in a sense, almost the events of the year, if not more time, each project of this kind attracts close attention. And as the pros and cons of all puppet cartoons can be written in excessive detail of any object entering the frame.

Partly why the visual style of "Monster Family" requires a separate mention. It is unusual and distinctive, but periodically its peculiarity can cross a certain line. The over-expressiveness, the deliberate exaggeration of both the physical merits of the characters and their flaws, can sometimes be attributed to such a notion as the aesthetics of the repugnant. The villain here is endowed with a devilishly unattractive appearance, and toward the end of the action his transformation may cause lasting disgust in most viewers at all. The reception is justified, the evil is punished practically in every possible way, but it is one thing if you are a person "in the subject" who knows approximately what to expect from such a picture and knowingly goes to enjoy the show, and quite another if, for example, you are a parent and take a ten year old child with you to a screening. When in the silence of the auditorium suddenly with a shudder resounded "I can not look at it," you should think, why, in fact, this picture is rated 0 +? It looks unreasonable (maybe only from a commercial point of view), even if we are talking about the "horror film for children" as the advertising positions the picture, because the shooting style, the narration itself, some too dark details can frighten, provoke rejection or even disgust, well, at first sight, 80% of adult viewers, not to mention children.

Otherwise, the time-tested wager works a hundred percent. The picture has exactly the zest that was in Paranorman and Coraline, which is very often found in the books by Roald Dahl (the same one who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and the Tim Burton films, and which I get excited about when I revisit Lemony Snicket. Using a specific visual style, "The Monster Family" explores all the same questions about humanity, family, friendship, support, good, evil, selfishness and, perhaps, greed. That is, all the things that would seem trivial, though true, if this were an ordinary story about ordinary people. But this is clearly not that case. Here the creators inhabit the city a whole bunch of strange characters, direct the story in a dark direction and unfold before the eyes of the audience quite an epic conflict arising from the collision of completely different worlds.

Mocking the notorious morality of Dickens' era (here, by the way, associations with his darker "A Christmas Carol" come to mind) and, in fact, playing on every possible standard of etiquette and social order, the creators almost desperately fight for humanity, touching on a whole host of related problems along the way.

Still, it's kind of wrong when evil triumphs over good, isn't it?

It is obvious that the authors approached the creation process with love, but they also fell into the old trap of "the best is the enemy of the good. The meticulous attention to detail deserves respect and admiration (by the way, steampunkers will be absolutely delighted, there are gears, all kinds of mechanisms, steam engines, goggles (those are welding glasses), a self-propelled chair and even a huge Destroyer with a fiery fryer inside). The same can be said about the way all sorts of comic situations are played out, which sometimes it is simply impossible to watch, if not without laughter, then at least without smiling. But still, there are too many plot lines and twists in the film which, unfortunately, even with positive impressions of the cartoon, you would like to call not just "expected" but "cliched". There is a problem of drawn-out narration, when the plot, deftly balancing on the brink of touching / blackening, starts to sag treacherously. Plus, as mentioned above, children or overly impressionable viewers may be repulsed by the picture. It is safe to say that the main trouble with "The Family" is that they try to position it as a picture for a wide audience, although it was clear from the beginning that this was not quite the right statement. And to my personal regret, the picture is likely to lose a certain part of its audience and get negative reviews precisely because of this positioning. Maybe I'm wrong, though.

In the end, "The Monster Family" is almost a parable admonition, framed as a story with charming characters and extremely interesting visuals, which can give you a chance to spend a very pleasant hour and a half, if you are a connoisseur of such pictures, or don't mind discovering something new and original.