Something to watch tonight: Friday 23 August

The Boxtrolls (Annable/Stachi, 2014)

Every Friday I have a regular on-air chat with Emile Donovan on RNZ Nights, and one of my challenges each week is to find something to watch that is available free of charge. Not every family has the kind of deep pockets that allow you to keep all those subscriptions online.

This week a charming stop-motion animated family film leaped out at me and, once I had decided to talk about it tonight, it made sense to recommend it you lovely people here too.

Back in 2014 I wasn’t producing as many written reviews as usual but we were still putting out a weekly podcast – Rancho Notorious – from my flat in Newtown, Wellington. That week, my co-host Kailey was reporting in live from the Vancouver Film Festival and we reviewed the 1980s Swedish teen punks in We Are the Best! and, of course, The Boxtrolls.

Now, thanks to a slightly dubious AI transcription of our conversation, here are some quotes:

Oh my gosh. I saw this last night and I tweeted you and I was like, ‘Oh my God, that's the best. That was so good.’

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The story is about a little fictional sort of fairytale town that is obsessed by cheese. They are cheese makers and cheese eaters. And at the beginning of the film, we see the boxtrolls (who are trolls who wear boxes as their clothing). They come out at night and go through the garbage, basically, and look for useful things that people have left behind. They're like wombles.

But at the beginning of the film, they're taking a baby away with them. So oh my goodness, what's going on here?

And a hero arrives to supposedly save the town, Archibald Snatcher, who with his henchmen offers. a little bit like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, offers to rid the town of the boxtrolls who may intend to steal and eat all of their children. He imposes a curfew so that after dark, nobody is allowed out.

We find out that the baby has grown up, not grown up fully, but has become a little boy known as Eggs, because he thinks that he's a boxtroll and he wears a carton, an egg box. And he discovers that basically, yeah, he's not a troll like the rest of them, and that he is in fact a human being, but doesn't really know how to fit himself back into society. I'm not telling this story very well at all, am I?

Yes, transcriptions of ad lib discussions are very embarrassing.

It's hilarious. You know, focus on the animation, not the voice cast, but the voice cast is so good. So good. They're so well cast.

The voice cast includes Ben Kingsley, Toni Collette and a bunch of British comedy luminaries like Richard Ayoade.

You're absolutely right in terms of saying that it's for all ages. We took the 11-year-old to it on Sunday afternoon and he was sort of on the edge of his seat all the way through and just laughing because it's got lots of really gross gags that little boys will appreciate.

It's got the great character work that adults will appreciate. And it's a really good story too and well told. It doesn't muck about. And this is, I know people say this about films all the time, but you really should stay all the way through the credits. Because the best post-credit scene that I've seen in a very, very long time, very much worth waiting around for.

You can listen to the whole thing here (including ten-year-old box office reports and film news).

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Where to watch The Boxtrolls

Aotearoa: Streaming on TVNZ+ (free with ads)

Australia: Streaming on FoxtelNow

Canada, Ireland: Digital rental

USA: Streaming on The Roku Channel (free with ads)

UK: Streaming on ITVx (free with ads)