Kubo and the Two Strings.

Kubo and the Two Strings is one of the five nominees for Best Animated Feature for this year’s Oscars, or perhaps one of the four nominees that’s going to lose to Zootopia … although I could craft a good argument for Kubo winning instead, especially if the quality of the animation and visual style count as much as the story and voice acting do. It’s available to rent or buy (just $10) on amazon and iTunes.

Kubo is a 3D stop-motion film from the same studio that produced Coraline (which is fantastic), Paranorman, and The Boxtrolls, all also filmed with stop-motion animation, a painstaking process of which you get a glimpse if you hang around through Kubo‘s closing credits. It’s incredible to look at and I found it hard to believe some parts were done via stop-motion because they were too smooth and vivid, things we would normally associate with computer animation like Pixar uses in its best-in-breed films.

Kubo is the main character, a one-eyed young boy who lives in a cave outside of his village with his ailing mother, whose grip on reality seems to ebb and flow with the daylight. She tells him heroic stories of his father, Hanzo, a warrior who disappeared while trying to protect his family, and Kubo repeats those stories by day in the town square, using his magic shamisen, which builds and animates origami figures as he plays and talks. By night, he must return to the cave, or his evil grandfather and aunts will return to try to steal his other eye to make their powers complete.

Needless to say, he stays out one night, there’s a battle, and Kubo has to go on a quest to find his father’s missing armor so he can protect himself from his grandfather (voiced by Ralph Fiennes, who is a little too good at the whole villain thing). He’s joined by Monkey (voiced by Charlize Theron), a totem he kept who was animated by his mother’s last burst of magic, and eventually Beetle (Matthew McConaughey), a giant insect samurai with meory loss, who help him try to retrieve the three parts of the armor and perhaps learn some Valuable Lessons along the way.

The story is a bit hackneyed, but the characters themselves are well-written and there’s plenty of humor within it to keep it from feeling too much like a fable. McConaughey gives a pretty good Buzz Lightyear performance as the flawed hero, mixing in bravado with the absent-mindedness that provides a lot of the comic relief. But Kubo is more of a visual feast than a great story – it’s just such a beautiful and unique-looking film that even the slower sequences when the quest first begins are still riveting.

I’ll also mention Finding Dory quickly here – it wasn’t nominated, falling behind two other Disney properties and two foreign films, and I can see why. It felt a lot like the softer version of Finding Nemo, with a lot less of the first film’s wonder and more feel-good elements – although I thought showing two sequences where Dory is separated from her family might be too much for younger kids. It’s a stunning film to watch, as Pixar manages to animate water and other difficult substances like nobody else in animation history, and I enjoyed the Wire reunion of Idris Elba and Dominic West as sea lions sharing a rock. It’s free to stream on Netflix now.

Comments

  1. I liked Kubo, but didn’t love it. Great visuals, to the point where I fully understand its nomination for Best Visual Effects, but the story was a bit lacking for me. I preferred the Disney/Pixar trio to this one. I haven’t seen the other two Animated Film nominees as of yet.

    I also want to mention the best part of Finding Dory: the short film that proceeded it, Piper! I absolutely adore that short to the point that it’s become my go-to pick-me-up when I’m feeling stressed or Trump does something stupid. If Piper doesn’t win on Sunday, I will be as upset as I was when Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan.

  2. In a way, it’s a shame this year’s Best Animated Feature class is so loaded because I’d love to see Kubo win. Agreed that the animation is the star of the show, though I was impressed and taken aback at the film’s unique ending.

  3. Fiennes is ver underrated, especially as a villain. Most will point to Lord V. But his turn in Schindlers List was just chilling.

  4. Call me crazy, but I liked Moana more than Zootopia, not that I’ll mind seeing Zootopia win.

    But it’ll be a travesty if either song from La La Land beats the song from Moana. Stone and Gosling are good actors but mediocre singers/dancers.

  5. Still waiting to see the foreign nominees, “My Life as a Zucchini” doesn’t open for another two weeks here, “The Red Turtle” should be soon after that.

    • I’ve seen The Red Turtle but haven’t reviewed it yet (I’m 3 films behind here). It’s … different. I don’t think it will have any chance to win.

  6. I had idea this was actually done with real stop-motion animation. I thought it was all CG. I wonder- does it make sense to even do stop-motion anymore, if people still think it’s computer-animated. Stop-motion was awesome, and a necessity before computer animation, but is it even worth it to put the time into it anymore?

  7. I wanted to love Kubo, but couldn’t.

    Visually, it was stunning but the story felt like it had been “board roomed” to death. Re-writes and compromises and multiple points of view turned it into a story without an identity. Was is for kids? Funny? Serious? Felt to me like it tried to be everything and ending up doing nothing (story wise) particularly well.