The following is an excerpt of my review for my church's newsletter. To read the rest, check out the newsletter!
Stop. Before you go any further, please watch Travis Knight’s Kubo and the Two Strings. First, it’s a fantastic film that deserves to be seen. A stop-motion masterpiece from the wizards at Studio Laika, the film follows a young boy named Kubo (Art Parkinson) in ancient Japan as he sets out to collect three enchanted artifacts so he can battle his grandfather, the wicked Moon King (Ralph Fiennes). Aided by a talking Monkey (Charlize Theron) and an amnesiac samurai cursed with the body of a beetle (Matthew McConaughey), the film plays like a classic Hollywood serial operating with the same mythopoetic narrative logic as Star Wars. It’s fun, colorful, emotional, and one of the best family films in recent years. The film needs our support. Despite a stunning 96% approval rating on RottenTomatoes, the film flopped at the box office, barely making a fourth of its $60 million budget back. But the second reason you should see Kubo is that the rest of this article explores spoilers. You have been warned.
Despite its rollicking sense of adventure, Kubo is a film about grief. Living in a seaside cave away from society, Kubo tends to his ailing mother who seems to be losing her mind and memory a bit more every day. He longs for a normal family, something denied him since birth when the Moon King killed his father. He makes money putting on performances with enchanted origami figures he magically brings to life with his shamisen—a stringed musical instrument played like a guitar. But the sight of happy families is too much for him. When the village has a festival where they honor their dead ancestors with prayers and paper lanterns, he breaks his mother’s rule to never stay out after dark so he can pray for his dead father. When the sun sets, the Moon King finds Kubo and sends his twin aunts (both voiced by Rooney Mara) to hunt him down. His mother dies protecting him one last time as she uses the last of her magic to send him far, far away to a land where he can be safe.
8/10
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