Really good looking movie, but there’s no way the seascapes were actually stop motion, right? I figured that was composited.
I loved the themes and thought the story’s heart was in the right place, but wasn’t that sold on the execution. Rooney Mara as the villainous, Vega-ish (Street Fighter) aunties weren’t that interesting, and the adventures felt like they made the cut because they looked great in the storyboards, not because they revealed character – what’s a hypnotic eyestalk got to do with Kubo’s situation?
Then again, the kids in the audience were most dialled in in those moments, and hardly paying attention during the stuff that I liked better, about the herons and such. I guess Laika knows they’re demo – the fire-breathing chicken is funny, and the kids loved it.
Took the family to see this a week ago and I was very impressed. I’m a sucker for a good stop-motion animation movie. Pair it with a story that breaks conventions and this quickly becomes one of my favorites in recent years. I know it’s a coming-of-age, magic quest trope, but the setting and execution felt really original to me. And having a kid who folds paper and fights with his music, instead of overcoming it with weapons was just great. I totally missed the Kubo as a bard angle, but that’s really an apt analogy.
Spoiler tag, but this is super-spoilery.
I might be the only one, but the twists really got me as well. I thought they might play the monkey off as a sort of clone of his mother’s spirit because she came from her magic, but I did not expect them to make her Kubo’s actual mother, with memories restored. And the revelation about the Beetle being his father also completely caught me by surprise. I really bought the story of him just being a soldier who served with him.
Far less spoilery.
I did not have a single issue with the film…until the credits rolled. As I said, the combination of the parts that made up the film made the whole thing feel original to me, and the music was such a strong factor in pulling you in, so I was completely disappointed that, instead of an original piece, or even continuing the themes from the film, they chose to start the credits with a cover that seemed to be a ham-fisted nod to Kubo’s instrument. It was really jarring to me, and completely pulled me out of the film. And then they sort of break the fourth wall with the scene of building one of the bad guys and moving it around, That’s stuff that I’d normally love to watch, but don’t want to see it in any part of the film.
All that said, I would heartily recommend Kubo to anyone, except maybe those with no soul. I almost missed it in the theaters because I don’t watch movie trailers, but rather trust if something’s good enough it’ll get some buzz somewhere that I’ll see. Thankfully I was looking something up on Rotten Tomatoes and noticed Kubo was in the upper 90s.
