Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Animated Feature 2014

The Contenders:

Big Hero 6 (winner)
The Boxtrolls
How to Train Your Dragon 2
Song of the Sea
The Tale of Princess Kaguya

Flattened Out

Film: The Boxtrolls
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

If awards were handed out for weird, The Boxtrolls would certainly win more than its share. It’s movies like this that make me worry for the fate of a company like Laika. They may not have the wholesomeness of Disney or the mass appeal of Pixar, but this is not a company that has ever let a bizarre idea get away. The issue is that their ideas are so singularly weird that I question their mass appeal. The Boxtrolls lost $10 million, which makes me wonder how much longer Laika can put creativity above box office demand.

And now I’m given pause, because I don’t really know how to tackle the narrative aspect of The Boxtrolls. While films like Neco z Alenky are certainly stranger in many ways, this is the oddest mass-market animated film I have ever seen, at least for a film directed primarily at a young audience. I’ll do my best, but if the next couple of paragraphs appear as word salad, forgive me. This isn’t a very forgiving film in terms of plot elements.