Film Discussion - 2016

18 I KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS I Film Discussion

It really is the year of animation. I've never experienced a year when I could literally make a legitimate top-10-list of the best-animated films of the year. The Oscar has a lot to pick from for Best Animation category this year. And the top contender seems to be Laika's new underground classic, Kubo and the Two Strings - a movie that is so critically acclaimed that it may have stolen Zootopia's hype. Impressive.

Kubo and the Two Strings is the story of Kubo – a young boy who lives in a cave with his mother in Edo Japan. Every day Kubo goes into town and play his two-string shamisen, which has magical ability to manipulate papers to fold into origami. Kubo is told to always come home before sunset. Of course one day Kubo makes the mistake of staying out too late and he soon finds himself on an adventure with a monkey and beetle-man.

You could look at this admittedly bonkers plot in two ways. One, the writers must've smoked something. Two, this is straight-up Miyazaki level creativity. To me it's the second one.

The concepts behind movie are beyond brilliant. From the story to the way the animators use 3D stop-motion to craft some of the most breathtaking action sequences. While Caroline and ParaNorman are both great movies, none of them came across as massive in scale as Kubo. This was definitely meant to be Laika's masterpiece.

The easy part of this review would be talking about the animation. They really are astounding. I'm not an expert on animation so I can't say these things but I feel like this movie is breaking new grounds. Somehow as the movie threw battle scenes after battle scenes at me, I started wondering how was this all done. The facial expressions seem more real in this movie. It actually flows a lot better than the other two Laika projects. Because of this when characters feel happy or sad, the moments are truly effective. The characters are also more capable of expressing difficult emotions like regrets, disappointments, and skepticisms. The design and colorings are beyond incredible; the dark scenes are colored with the correct lighting; the sunset looks beautiful; the night looks heavy and cold. Visually speaking, this movie is an all-around winner.

The voice performances are great. The kid who plays Kubo is really good. Matthew Mcconaughey gives a performance that ranges from goofy to emotional. Chelize Theron is a bit of a standout to me. She plays this strict monkey and asserts herself really well. But the reason I have to praise her separately is more because of how quickly she can change her tone. There are times when she has to go from strict to caring to surprise to anger and to panic. These are not easy to do and yet she really pulls it off in the best way.

So... this movie sounds really great. It has good acting, unbelievable visuals, and an intriguing concept... so why do I not love it?

It annoys me much more because unlike The Jungle Book or Zootopia, I can't pinpoint the exact problems with this movie. In fact, I'm not even sure if there is any real problem with the movie. Maybe there's a problem with me.

If I have to give it an objective rating, this movie would receive a very high score. However, I don't believe there is a way to objectively look at art, so I'm just going to say that I don't think I enjoyed this movie as much as I wanted to. I still walked out of it with a great big smile and it is still a refreshingly entertaining and exciting film amidst a year of disappointment and blandness. My issue is with certain parts of the story and the tone of the entire story. And again, I'm not sure why I don't but I'll try to explain it.

There is a mismatch of tone and characters. A lot of time in this film, they try to throw in quips and jokes to lighten up the mood. The problem is most of the characters in the film are not suitable to make those quips and jokes. Usually in an ensemble movie, you will have the a few main characters who are quite serious and very rarely make jokes – or if they do, they would be more character-based – and you have some other characters who would be the ones doing the funny. With this movie, I feel like all of the characters are the main ones and yet they are written to say funny stuff that maybe should've been said by a sidekick. Thus certain lines feel a little forced. Kubo is at times shown to be a little naughty, but I question that because of how he is raised to take care of his mother – shouldn't he be more mature than most kids. And granted, he IS actually more mature but it just feels like the scene when he's purposely annoying the monkey... he's just written to do that. The monkey is a really fun character but she baffles me as well. This is especially the case when later on in the film there's a twist. When it is revealed, not only do I not get it but also I don't feel like it makes much sense. In this case, it's more like the character has been acting a certain way but when something is revealed in the middle of the film, it makes no sense why the character would be acting the way she was throughout the first half. The beetle is the only one who seems coherently in characters all the time.

Towards the end of the film, there's another twist. This one I find really predictable. I was able to guess the twist from very early on. This one in particular takes the story into a whole new direction, which I frankly do not like. It is difficult to say precisely why without spoilers.

That being said it is important to note the film does this to complete its story arch. It is a well-crafted films and the problems I listed above are more about what I enjoy that the quality of the movie itself. This film is a great product; I just don't necessarily like all of it on a personal level.

It sounds like a negative review but it really isn't. As I said I really enjoyed the film just not as much as most people do. It still is a beautifully animated, well-written, well-acted masterpiece. If this is the kind of quality every kid's film has to reach now, Illumination has to pick up the game a bit.