As this new trailer for The Boxtrolls shows, the movie’s titular trolls aren’t the likeliest of superheroes. They live underground, feast on grubs and probably use Ghostbuster II’s slime river for bath times. The MSN-hosted promo reveals them in all their endearingly mucky glory as they go about their garbage-collecting business below their town’s cobbled streets, like a cadre of horror Wombles.
The Boxtrolls** is the third feature-length effort from those stop-motion whizzes at Laika. Like **ParaNorman **and Coraline, it promises a meticulously crafted 3D gallivant through a world filled with dark humour and loving lunacy – all seen through a child’s point of view.
The story, adapted from Alan Snow’s book Here Be Monsters!, introduces the beasties who live underneath the streets of a small, quirky town and crawl out of the sewers at night to steal what the townspeople hold most dear: their kids. At least, that’s the legend the townspeople have always believed. In truth, the creatures are a community of lovable oddballs who are raising as one of their own an abandoned and orphaned human boy named Eggs (Isaac Hempstead-Wright).
When the Boxtrolls are targeted by a villainous exterminator bent on eradicating them, Eggs must venture aboveground to save them, where he teams with an adventurous young girl to save not only the Boxtrolls but also the soul of his hometown. This "steampunk, Victorian, Monty Python-world seemed perfect for the look of stop motion,” director Anthony Stacchi told Yahoo! Movies. "You can’t ask for better characters to animate in stop motion than guys who live in magical boxes that pop in and out of the top of."
Appearing alongside Game Of Thrones’ Hempstead-Wright is a tasty-looking voice cast that boasts Ben Kingsley, Elle Fanning, Toni Collette, Jared Harris, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade and Tracy Morgan.
The Boxtrolls will be emerging Stateside on September 26 and September 12 over here.