Psycho's Movie Reviews #134: Kubo And The Two Strings (2016)

Kubo and the Two Strings is a 2016 American stop-motion animated action fantasy film directed by Travis Knight (in his feature directorial debut) and produced by animation studio Laika. It stars Charlize Theron, Art Parkinson, Ralph Fiennes, George Takei, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Brenda Vaccaro, Rooney Mara, and Matthew McConaughey.

The film revolves around Kubo, a young boy who wields a magical shamisen (a Japanese stringed instrument) and whose left eye was stolen during infancy. Accompanied by an anthropomorphic snow monkey and beetle, he must embark on a quest to defeat his mother's evil Sisters and his power-hungry grandfather, Raiden the Moon King, who is responsible for stealing his left eye.

Kubo premiered at Melbourne International Film Festival and was released by Focus Features in the United States on August 19 to critical acclaim, but was considered a box office failure, grossing $77 million worldwide against a budget of $60 million. The film won the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film, and was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature and Best Visual Effects, becoming the second stop-motion animated film ever to be nominated in the latter category following 1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the first film to be nominated for both.

Plot

In feudal Japan, a 12-year-old boy with only one eye named Kubo tends to his ill mother Sariatu in a mountain cave near a village. He earns their living by magically manipulating origami with music from his shamisen for the village folk, telling the tale of his missing father Hanzo, a samurai warrior. Kubo is never able to finish his story, as he does not know what happened to Hanzo and Sariatu cannot recall the end due to her deteriorating mental state. Sariatu warns him not to stay out after dark as her Sisters, Karasu and Washi, and his grandfather, the Moon King (who took his eye when he was a baby) will find him and take his remaining eye.

One day, Kubo learns of the village's Bon festival allowing them to speak to deceased loved ones. Kubo attends but is angry that Hanzo does not appear from his lantern, and forgets to return home before sunset. Karasu and Washi quickly find him and attack, but Sariatu suddenly appears and uses her magic to send Kubo far away, telling him to find his father's armour.

Kubo wakes up in a distant land to find Monkey, his wooden snow monkey charm, has come alive. Monkey tells him Sariatu is gone and the village destroyed. With help of "Little Hanzo", an origami figure based on Kubo's father, they set out to find the armour. Along the way, they meet Beetle, an amnesiac samurai who was cursed to take the form of a stag beetle/human hybrid but believes himself to have been Hanzo's apprentice.

Kubo, Monkey, and Beetle reclaim the "Sword Unbreakable" from a cave guarded by a giant skeleton. They cross the Long Lake in a leaf boat to locate the "Breastplate Impenetrable" deep underwater. Kubo and Beetle swim down to retrieve it and encounter a sea monster, the "Garden of Eyes", who first uses its many eyes to entrance its victims by showing them visions of secrets, then eats them. Kubo is caught in the creature's sight, but while entranced, comes to realize that Monkey is the reincarnated spirit of his mother. Beetle rescues the unconscious Kubo and obtains the Breastplate, but on returning to the boat, they find that Monkey has been badly wounded fighting and defeating Karasu.

They go to shore to recover, where Monkey explains that she and her Sisters were ordered by the Moon King to kill Hanzo, but she instead fell in love with him, and the Moon King branded her an enemy. That night, Kubo dreams of meeting Raiden, a blind elderly man, who points him towards the "Helmet Invulnerable" in Hanzo's abandoned fortress. They travel there the next day but realize too late it is a trap set by the Moon King and Washi. Washi reveals that Beetle is Hanzo, whom they cursed for taking Sariatu away from them, and kills Hanzo. Sariatu sacrifices herself, buying Kubo the time to use his shamisen to defeat Washi, breaking two of the three strings on it. Little Hanzo provides insight to Kubo that the Helmet is actually the bell at the village, and Kubo breaks the last string to quickly travel there.

At the village, Kubo meets Raiden, who is revealed as the Moon King. He offers to take Kubo's other eye to make him immortal, but Kubo refuses. Raiden transforms into a giant Dunkleosteus-like dragon, the Moon Beast, and pursues Kubo and the remaining villagers into its cemetery. When Hanzo's armour proves ineffective, Kubo removes it and restrings his shamisen using his mother's hair, his father's bowstring, and his own hair. With the instrument, he summons the spirits of the villagers' loved ones, who show Raiden that memories are the strongest magic of all and can never be destroyed. Kubo and the spirits' magic protect themselves and the villagers from Raiden, stripping him of his powers and leaving him a mortal human without any memories. Spurred on by Kubo's stories, the villagers choose compassion and tell Raiden he was a man of many positive traits, accepting him into the village. Kubo is able to speak to his parents' ghosts during the subsequent Bon ceremony, as they watch the deceased villagers' lanterns transform into golden herons and fly to the spirit world.

Production

Announced by the stop-motion animation studio Laika in December 2014, the project is the directorial debut of Laika's CEO Travis Knight. Laika's production designer Shannon Tindle pitched the story to Knight as a "stop-motion samurai epic". Although the studio had never ventured into the genre before, Knight was enthusiastic about the project; owing partly his affinity towards both the "epic fantasy" genre as well as Japanese culture in general.

The art took inspiration from such Japanese media as ink wash painting and origami among others. A particular influence came from the ukiyo-e woodblock style, with Laika intending to make the entire film "to look and feel as if it's a moving woodblock print" Assistance came from 3D printing firm Stratasys who allowed Laika to use their newest technologies in exchange for feedback on them. Knight mentioned that the story for the film was partly inspired by works of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.

For the Skeleton monster the team created a giant 16 ft (4.9 m), 400 lb (180 kg) puppet, which Laika claims is the record holder for largest stop-motion puppet. The idea to make such a massive puppet was born out of a fear that individual smaller parts (meant to represent the larger monster) would not work well on screen interacting with the other puppets. The resulting puppet was built in two parts which were then attached together by magnets. For movement Laika had to design a robot to easily manipulate it. The team at one point purchased an industrial robot from eBay but found that it would not work with their setup. A small portion of the production was released on YouTube.

Music

Dario Marianelli composed and conducted the score for the film.

Release/Reception/Box Office

The film screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival on August 13, 2016, and was theatrically released in the United States on August 19, 2016.

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 97% based on reviews from 221 critics, with an average rating of 8.40/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Kubo and the Two Strings matches its incredible animation with an absorbing—and bravely melancholy—story that has something to offer audiences of all ages." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 84 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it an 85% overall positive score and a 63% "definite recommend".

Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com awarded the film 3.5 stars out of 4, saying that "one of the most impressive elements of Kubo and the Two Strings—besides its dazzling stop-motion animation, its powerful performances and its transporting score—is the amount of credit it gives its audience, particularly its younger viewers." IGN's Samantha Ladwig gave the film 7.5/10, stating that the film is "Dark, twisted, and occasionally scary, but also with humour, love, and inspiration." Jesse Hassenger, of The A.V. Club, praised the film, saying that "no American animation studio is better-suited to dreamlike plotting than Laika, and the animation of Kubo is truly dazzling, mixing sophistication and handmade charm with inspired flow."

Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post gave the film 4/4 stars, stating that the film is "both extraordinarily original and extraordinarily complex, even for a grown-up movie masquerading as a kiddie cartoon (which it kind of is)." In The New York Times, Glenn Kenny said that "the movie's blend of stop-motion animation for the main action with computer-generated backgrounds is seamless, creating what is the most visually intoxicating of all Laika's movies." Peter Debruge of Variety wrote that ""Kubo" offers another ominous mission for a lucky young misfit, this one a dark, yet thrilling adventure quest that stands as the crowning achievement in Laika's already impressive oeuvre." Jordan Hoffman of The Guardian was more critical of the film, giving it a two out of five stars and saying that "Older kids, except for a few teacher’s pets, will soon realise that this is hardly a fun action-adventure cartoon at all, but a plate of vegetables."

Jonathan Pile of Empire, wrote of the film: "Yet another success for stop-motion giants Laika … boasts big laughs and effective scares in a typically gorgeous animated tale."

Kubo and the Two Strings grossed $48 million in North America and $29.5 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $77.5 million, against a budget of $60 million.

In the United States, the film was released on August 19, 2016, alongside Ben-Hur and War Dogs, and was projected to gross $12–15 million from 3,260 theatres in its opening weekend with some going as high as $17–20 million. It made $515,000 from its Thursday night previews and $4.1 million on its first day. It went on to gross $12.6 million in its opening weekend, finishing 4th at the box office behind War Dogs, Sausage Party And Suicide Squad.

Budget $60 million

Box office $77.5 million

My Review

You know what I love in Kubo and the Two Strings (among several other things)? It doesn't go out of its way to explain its magic. It simply IS. Oh, sure, there's a talking monkey that saves the lead character Kubo (voiced by Art Parkinson, the monkey by Charlize Theron), and there's an explanation briefly (and then a later one, which I won't reveal at all), but it doesn't matter any more than how Kubo can use his guitar strings to make his origami turn into sword-wielding samurai, or how the former bodyguard named Beetle comes to be (Matthew McConaughey going back into his 'McConnaissance' mode as being a truly great performance expanding what we thought he's capable of a semi-comic sidekick).

The filmmakers let the characters explain when they need to, yet when they do it's done in the form of storytelling - at one point when Monkey is finally pressed by Kubo (and Beetle too) to say what is going on with his otherworldly grandfather and his Aunt who is out to, well, kill him and what Monkey has to do with it, she can only tell it as Kubo plays his guitar and the papers for his origami go into the air to show as she tells. This is a film that loves storytelling and storytellers, and yet never forgets that this is a full-bodied CINEMATIC experience.

I can't remember the last time I've recently seen so much imagination and visual invention in one fantastical animated film, stop motion or otherwise (not even Finding Dory, which certainly has both humour and some heartfelt moments, got to that this year). The story involves a little boy, who we are introduced to at the start as being saved/protected by his mother as a baby (with an eye cut out, by his grandfather), that is at the start making money by performing with his flying/magic origami in a village while tending to his mother who seems to be suffering from amnesia (as an aside, I knew I would love this movie about five minutes in when the filmmakers show us what this dynamic between son and mother is as the latter stares off into space with a haunted, sad look as the son tries his best to care for her, all without words, a perfect moment that I'd never expect to see in a kid's film in a multiplex kind of environment).

But Kubo can't be out after dark, the evil sister of his Mother - with a black hat and white mask that makes her creepy past Burton-type standards - attacks, and Kubo is sent away and is knocked out. When he awakes Monkey is there and, soon after on this quest to find items that will help him face his evil Aunt and grandfather, the Beetle guard, and it becomes a hero's journey story. And what a hero and journey! There's a lot of action that the filmmakers pack into this movie - it is a Japanese fantasy-inspired film, so there may be some violent imagery that may scare the wee ones like under four of five, but most kids should be able to take it and, if I remember how I was at that age, love it - and it involves things like a giant skeleton monster that comes to life with swords stuck in its skull (and the three characters have to find which one is their unbreakable one), and, my favourite weird and wonderful creation, a group of underwater eyeballs that, when one looks too long at them, puts the person in a trance leading down to a... well, don't want to give it away.

The voice-work is a delight which, as I said, McConaughey really digs into being a character who is the faithful protector though has some 'off' memory problems at times and a looser way of looking at protecting a child than Monkey (Theron plays the strict motherly figure as good as she's played any role, including Monster or Furiosa), and it becomes this story that's as much about family than it is about revenge or other petty things. You do have to pay attention, this isn't a movie that you can throw on for your kids and they can act crazy or get distracted: it asks that you watch it and take in a story that at its core isn't too far removed from Joseph Campbell, but does so many twists that it becomes its own original entity.

Kubo and the Two Strings gives you all that you could want in a family animated movie, but more than that is a splendid, heart-rending fantasy epic in under 100 minutes. It brings me back to when I first saw something like The Dark Crystal and was amazed at what creators can do when they embrace really creating a WORLD that their characters can inhabit - not to mention keeping any humour to the situations or behaviour, nothing that dates it at all. I can't recommend it enough. 10/10!!!