Kubo and the Two Strings Review

Kubo and the Two Strings is the latest stop-motion film from Laika, the makers of Coraline and Box Trolls. It has heavy Japanese influences and beautiful animation, but lamentably not much else.

The plot involves little Kubo, voiced by Art Parkinson, as he embarks on a quest to locate three pieces of his deceased father's armor (a sword, a breastplate, and a helmet), legend has it it is the only thing that can protect him from evil. The evil is his grandfather. His grandfather is the Moon King, a underdeveloped god-like man who wants to rob our little protagonist of his eyes so he can join the "blind" world in the sky. He has already stolen one eye, and sends two of his daughters for the other. Reminiscent of the button-eyes in Coraline, it seems Laika has an eye fetish.

His mother tells of a parable which is thinly veiled to be the plot of the movie, so we the viewer and pint-sized Kubo already know what to expect. Of course, we the movie-goer already know more, as the narrative is far more generic than the darkly twisted world of the studio's debut feature film.

There four major problems in this 102 minute long film, a quadrilogy of issues that distract an otherwise very pretty sequence of flashy color and intricate stop-motion animation. Firstly is the dialogue, its stilted, narrative-driving exclusive dialogue. Every line of text is read like wannabe actor reading cue-cards, where Kubo's mother is referred to as "mother" and, well, you get the idea. I do not know her name, I never heard it mentioned. Perhaps her name is "Mother," which would pretty much guarantee she would have a kid.

The second issue is the "enemy-of-the-week" story, where our hero Kubo must journey to find three pieces of his dad's armor (surprisingly, his dad actually has a name- good luck hearing it said, however). Each piece is protected by a villain, a nasty that plays out like a boss in a video game. Our hero Kubo, or one of his comrades that he acquires along his way, then destroys the boss character and the search for the next enemy begins. It is about as exciting as watching someone else play a video game, albeit a visually breathtaking one.

Third on the list is the visuals- oh, wait, you thought I said they were beautiful? Trust me, they are. Stop-motion has always fascinated me, and always will, but the problem here lies not in the animation, but in the scope of the environments. There is a moment where Kubo and friends walk a snowy path in their quest. We see snow, stop-motion snow, but there is no sense of scale, nothing epic in any shot. The audience never feels wowed by the world created, no wintry vistas no grand mountains. And the film's finale takes place in a small village, the same you would see if you watched any generic kung-fu film. If you are going through all the trouble of making this stop-motion, give me something wonderful to see. Not something I have seen before.

Then we have the most glaring problem of the movie; the film is called "Kubo and the Two Strings." The strings refer to the shamisen (a Japanese three-stringed guitar for those without access to Google), which Kubo carries on his back the entire time. He plays it and he makes paper become living, breathing origami, allowing him to fly or do other things. But nothing else in the film deals with music, and if this is Kubo's "main weapon," if we are continuing on the video game theme here, when why does he need the armor? Spoiler alert, he never truly needs it: his friend the monkey uses it, but Kubo just plays music to stop evil. So why did we need to chronicle Kubo acquiring the items? At least the film did not try and have Kubo's origami creations defeat evil. The worst they could do is give evil a paper-cut.

Kubo, Kubo, Kubo... Kubo. You may have noticed how many times I used the name Kubo in this review, eighteen so far, not including the title. If you decide to see this movie, get used to his name, because it is said more times than "Carol Anne" in Poltergeist 3.