Kubo and the Two Strings (****)

KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS is the fourth film from the production company Laika, the same team that released movies like ParaNorman and Coraline. Based on that resume, one would expect Kubo to be a dark and eerie storie full of strange visuals, and you would be right in that assumption. The key difference one might find is that this is more so a story about a family. It's sad they didn't get it quite right.

There is some controversy surrounding the casting of an all-white cast to play Asian characters, but we can look past that. The story is a fairytale of sorts about a little boy who washes ashore as a baby with his mother. In her possession is little more than a shamisen (the Japanese equivalent of a banjo). Kubo grows and raises his mother (who is lost in a haze of confusion and distance) and earns his keep by using his mother's magical instrument to perform origami shows in the nearby village. He has heard stories about his now deceased father and how he was a great warrior. Like all kid heroes, he dreams of one day living up to his memory.

We learn that it was his two aunts and grandfather that ultimately killed Kubo's father (kind of heavy for a children's movie, I admit) and that in order to prevent them from killing Kubo, he must remain hidden from the sky when the sun is down. I'm sure you can guess what happens next.

The visual tapestries that weave together the story are simply remarkable, and the look of this movie will be unlike anything you have seen in quite a while. At times it became mirky whether or not I was looking at stop-motion animation or computer imagery, but the blurring of these lines worked in harmony to make a movie that would surely suffer had it been strictly one medium or the other. This is a movie that would be equally as stunning (if not more so) while watched with the volume off, allowing you to get lost in the framing of shots or the colors on screen.

The film's absolute first lines are spoken by Kubo: "If you must blink, do it now." I had hoped this was a sign of a wonderful film to come, and by all means I tried my hardest throughout the screening to drink in as much of the film as possible. What was disappointing was the rest of the movie, the aspects of characters and plot that felt both boring and cliched. Kubo finds himself alone and tasked with finding a suit of armor to defeat the final villain (you guessed it, his grandfather). He must procure a sword, a helmet, and a breastplate. Along the way, he makes friends with a beetle-man (quite literally a cursed man stuck in an in-between state) and a monkey that was once a charm Kubo kept in his pocket. Like The Wizard of Oz and all the other films like it, we know the hero must adopt some friends for his travel. The unfortunate part is that these characters just don't gel as a group and are reduced to simple comic punchlines to keep children entertained (I assume). Where the movie started out with a mature and brilliant setup, the back half of the story was simply a different, less sophisticated tone. There is also a significant twist near the end of the film that puts these two characters in a new light. The sad part is that the filmmakers didn't work to set them up properly or structure any sort of meaningful payoff. We find out this detail and simply go "what?"

Compared to other animated films this year (Finding Dory, Zootopia) I will still tip the hat to Kubo, a wholly original concept with a remarkable look. In a time when movies are nearly 100% sequels or reboots or any combination there of, Kubo is a unique movie that I know the general moviegoer will enjoy and children will find thrilling. It's not a bad movie by any means. I only wished it could have been that much better.