“We are revolting children, living in revolting times”, Tim Minchin’s lyrics go in one of Matilda The Musical’s most entrancing songs, which captures the true spirit of Roald Dahl’s imagination, which seeds the justifiably dark but ultimately hopeful depths of a certain juvenile mind. This sentence and its originating mindset could well be residing in many of Laika Entertainment’s fascinating stop-motion animations, where neglected children –the seeming underdogs- must not only survive and cope with ridiculously self-absorbed, non-caring adults; but they must teach the apathetic bunch of them a lesson or two by any means necessary. Following the success of the masterfully creepy Coraline (adapted from Neil Gaiman’s novel), and the spirited wonder ParaNorman, the Laika creators give voice to children who are bound to revolt against indifferent adults once more with The Boxtrolls, a fresh story with a big heart (adapted from Adam Snow’s novel “Here Be Monsters!”), set in a sinisterly eerie, dystopian time and place, Laika-style.

The best children’s stories often empower an unlikely child and turn him or her into a hero through wit, smarts and resilience. They also surface the intellectual curiosities of youthful minds and infuse them with the singular notion of acceptance, of new forms and ideas, aiming to prove that those who differ on the surface might be the most surprisingly fascinating creatures. And The Boxtrolls, happily, scores outstandingly on both accounts.

This story of underground, trash-collecting trolls living in their box shells beneath a cheese-loving town plagued by bureaucracy is perhaps a mouthful and does not offer as instant a hook as Laika’s previous work, but for those who are patient, the end reward is immense. The Boxtrolls is dangerous, funny, packed with clever and sophisticated metaphors (both for adults and kids) and happens to be challenging enough for young ones who are amenable to a reasonable amount of grotesque. The Boxtrolls follows Eggs (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), a human who falls into the loving and caring hands of the unjustly feared and condemned Boxtrolls as a baby (false, ghastly rumors suggest that Boxtrolls kidnap and eat human babies), the film is an unlikely, yet still classic coming-of-age story; actually, two coming-of-age stories. When Eggs decides Boxtrolls can no longer “carry on as if nothing is wrong” while their family members frequently get kidnapped by the evil Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley), whose one aim is to destroy the Boxtrolls to climb up on the social and economic ranks, he goes above ground and meets Winnie (Elle Fanning). Being the daughter of a high-ranking social figure who is more concerned with the status his white hat brings to him than his mischievously curious-minded and precocious daughter’s well-being, Winnie spends her days trying to get his father’s attention and explore ways of coping with her boredom. Naturally, when she meets Eggs, her reaction is driven more by a marvelous inquisitiveness than fear. She quickly decides the legends told against The Boxtrolls have been lies all along, and teams up with Eggs to rescue the members of his family, including Egg’s adoptive father Fish.

During the kids’ rescue mission and quest to reverse a wrong belief, The Boxtrolls undertakes many metaphoric themes by ripping a slowly rotting society apart from many angles. The clashes among the socioeconomic classes that make up a society, the out-of-touch state of the rich, the bureaucratic vicious-circle that slowly cripples active reasoning (for instance, two of the human characters constantly struggle in deciding whether their jobs have become too consuming that they can no longer see if they are still doing right thing) and the dynamics of parenting…all get a fair whip from the storytellers. And while adults may delve into the depths of this grown-up material and enjoy the film’s refined humor, kids will still understand, be challenged by and look up to the core values of Winnie and Eggs, and have a good laugh when Eggs tries to act like a real, well-mannered boy for the first time.

Directors Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi have done astounding work in orchestrating a dizzying amount of visual detail into the warm, earth-toned above and underground worlds of The Boxtrolls. And Dario Marianelli’s playful yet uncanny score is just another intricate layer of detail stretched over a nearly perfect playground, where kids’ smarts and resourcefulness are eternally bound to shatter the wrongdoings of clueless adults. Children revolt. Children win.

Grade: A