The Box Trolls is a 2014 british children’s comedy directed by Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable and featuring the voice work of known stars such as Simon Pegg, Ben Kingsley, and Elle Fanning. I expected the film to be cute and delightful. What I got was another glimpse into the surprisingly intelligent world of today’s kids films. Not all kids films are intelligent. Often you’re expected to sit there and enjoy a mostly meaningless explosion of color and light that tries, halfheartedly, to make some type of rote moral statement. The Box Trolls seem to fall victim to this completely as an afterthought–a none to subtle tip of the hat ending that says, “Oh, and if you’re stupid then this is exactly the message we are trying to send.” Only the message they are actually trying to send is far deeper.
The film is constructed largely as a condemnation on societies (like ours) that openly rely on marxist principles such as the class conflict between the few wealthy and many poor. The story follows a boy who goes to live with these Box Trolls (for reasons that are central to the big plot twist at the end, so I won’t share them here). In the city above their subterranean home the Box Trolls are seen as a menace to society–the boogieman that forces a curfew at night. In fact, much of the story world Box Troll myth is perpetuated on the tale of the Box Trolls supposedly having kidnapped the film’s protagonist and eaten him. Obviously the boogiemen didn’t eat that boy. On one level the movie talks about the falsehood of the boogieman and how this particular so-called boogieman is really just the migrant worker class, hidden from view and made to seem evil to advance a small number of somewhat charismatic individuals to a higher status. Each of the villains in the film is dealing with some sociological or moral dilemma about the idea of place, role, or redemption, but the conflict is masked by this larger illusion of good vs. evil. Make no mistake, there is no good class here. The rich leadership of the film world, signified by their white hats, are classic fat cats who openly let the city go to waste in order to sit around in their private club and feast on their cheese.
Let that sink in for a minute: actual cheese.
It gets better. The central villain wants nothing more than to cross classes and gain his white hat status so he can eat cheese with the upper crust of society. Unfortunately, that man cannot handle his cheese all too well, a fact that expectedly leads to his downfall. There are more than a few hints of a Ricardian Socialist utopia at the end, leaving one to question if this is a condemnation of the status system or a reminder that chasing the status and not valuing your role as a worker is the key to your own destruction.
I am going to use this film in class next year for social deconstruction. There is a lot to unpack for such a short and pretty film.