Kubo and the Two Strings
Directed by: Travis Knight
Written by: Marc Haimes and Chris Butler; Story by Shannon Tindle and Marc Haimes
Voices by: Art Parkinson, Charlize Theron, Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes, Rooney Mara, Brenda Vaccaro, George Takei
Animation/Adventure/Family - 101 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 18 Aug 2016
Written by: Marc Haimes and Chris Butler; Story by Shannon Tindle and Marc Haimes
Voices by: Art Parkinson, Charlize Theron, Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes, Rooney Mara, Brenda Vaccaro, George Takei
Animation/Adventure/Family - 101 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 18 Aug 2016
Frame by frame, second by second, year by year, the artists at LAIKA Studios painstakingly put together stop-motion animated films. Along with the product come the astounding facts of how they did it: 150,000 cotton swabs, enough Tyvek to reach the moon and back, etc… Presenting their fourth film after Coraline (2009), ParaNorman (2012), and The Boxtrolls (2014), LAIKA shows off an epic, fantasy quest in Kubo and the Two Strings. While the technical wizardry employed is second to none in this arena, Kubo the story surprisingly lacks the impact you expect from a family-centered epic and douses the narrative in an opaque metaphor about blinding yourself to the world.
Earlier this year, LAIKA Studios was presented with an Academy Award for scientific and technical achievement. It’s easy to see why. Even though stop-motion films are over 100 years old, what LAIKA achieves with puppets, patience, and even 3D printing is nothing short of astounding. They are the pinnacle of stop-motion animation in the 21st century. Moving on from their Dickensian London sets from the delightful Boxtrolls, Kubo’s world is much larger and visually more complicated.
Earlier this year, LAIKA Studios was presented with an Academy Award for scientific and technical achievement. It’s easy to see why. Even though stop-motion films are over 100 years old, what LAIKA achieves with puppets, patience, and even 3D printing is nothing short of astounding. They are the pinnacle of stop-motion animation in the 21st century. Moving on from their Dickensian London sets from the delightful Boxtrolls, Kubo’s world is much larger and visually more complicated.
This Japanese-inspired folk tale brings a family’s story to life using origami and a magical guitar-like instrument, called a shamisen. Kubo (Art Parkinson, San Andreas) lives with his mother in a cliff-top cave. An exciting prologue shows Kubo’s mother on a rickety raft getting pummeled by waves escaping…something. Now, Kubo takes care of his mother who fades away mentally more and more each day. Entertaining the people in a nearby village with origami shows detailing his family’s history of samurai heroics through notes on his shamisen, Kubo feels lonely and quite curious about the close-knit families he observes honoring their ancestors with lanterns and dance during the annual Obon Festival.
Steeped in what appears to be rigorous research in Japanese culture and philosophy, Kubo’s life abruptly shifts away from bringing sheets of paper to life and into a classic hero’s journey. Accompanied by two odd and sparring companions, Monkey (Charlize Theron, The Huntsman: Winter’s War) and an amnesiac samurai beetle (Matthew McConaughey, The Wolf of Wall Street), Kubo must track down three pieces of armor to protect himself and fight the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes, Hail, Caesar!). Monkey and Beetle are very protective of Kubo and morph into hybrid sidekick/mentor/babysitter roles. As with all quests and journeys, Kubo confronts a series of monsters who pop up on the way.
The monsters include a Giant Skeleton, spherical-shaped giant eyeballs on stalks underwater, and a serpentine Moon Beast who glows at night and comes across as the most impressive of the baddies. The Moon Beast is also the largest stop-motion puppet ever made, a 16-foot floating behemoth. While the monsters are flashy enough for the youngsters, I was more enthralled with an element as simple as the water. Multiple sequences in Kubo are set on the sea and just imagining how difficult it must be to replicate realistic water, especially waves, in stop-motion hurts my head.
First time director Travis Knight, who is also LAIKA’s President and CEO, pulls off true to life water motion and figured out a way to bring together the thousands of disparate elements it takes to accomplish stop-motion films. He shepherds innovative technology to support his grand, Japanese-infused vision. However, if the screenplay by Marc Haimes and Chris Butler were equally as strong, Kubo and the Two Strings would really have something to show off. As it is, Kubo is all aesthetics with a side of story. The pieces are there, but their form lacks weight and never adds all the layers it could on top of its skeletal frame. It’s no Boxtrolls.
Kubo is still worth the view though; 24 frames per second and filming 15.9 frames per day is a gargantuan task. I wish movie audiences salivated over LAIKA films as much as they do Pixar movies, most of all for the work ethic. Kubo could have been done so much faster on a computer, but then we wouldn’t have all the swirling origami and warm feelings that stop-motion provides, and Kubo would be all the more stale for it.
Comment Box is loading comments...
