The Boxtrolls

Those with a soft spot for chaotic critters will delight in this fun, aesthetically appealing adaptation of Alan Snow's illustrated novel Here Be Monsters!. Produced by the stop-motion animation studio behind ParaNorman and Coraline, the film is set in Cheesebridge, a towering town whose populace live in fear of the eponymous beasties. Isaac Hempstead-Wright provides the voice for the boy raised by these misunderstood nocturnal creatures, with Elle Fanning as the lonely girl he befriends. However, the young leads are a touch wan so it's up to the adult cast (including Richard Ayoade, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) to get their teeth into their larger-than-life characters. Although the film suffers from a simplistic, sometimes rushed, plot, the right-on script scatters moral messages among the anarchy by taking a pop at wasteful aristocrats and the ruthlessly aspirational (epitomised by Ben Kingsley's dastardly troll-exterminator), while cheeringly championing the demonised little guys. Indeed, the blue-skinned, miscellaneously misshapen boxtrolls are a triumph of design and painstaking execution, with their glow-in-the-dark eyes providing ample wow factor.