KUBO'S KEEPERS Kubo flanked by Beetle and Monkey.
Cinema
Ciara Galvin
LAST week I wrote about cartoon sausages staging a coup in a supermarket, this week I’m writing about talking beetles and monkeys.
The movie world is strange, but an intriguing one nonetheless. ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ is the latest stop-motion puppetry film from studio Laika, the maker of ‘Coraline’. Yes, I got that information from Google.
Set in ancient Japan, the little hero ‘Kubo’ (voiced by Donegal teenager Art Parkinson) brings us into his magical world filled with flying origami and breathtaking vistas.
‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ is the perfect example of ‘old meets new’ technology. The old-school stop-motion puppetry is painstaking and requires each figure to be moved, pictured, and so on and so forth, until a moving sequence is created.
With a film that contains so much action, one can only imagine how long it took to create. This, merged with the new animation that brings to life leafy landscapes of ancient Japan ensures that the film is a visual feast.
What struck me straight away was the use of colour in this film, the pinky dusty sunrises are as vivid as any in real life and likewise the moon in the dead of night casts a realistic haze over the water.
Kubo lives in a cave with his melancholic mother, Sariatu, who he cares for daily. He only has one eye, and we’re informed that his evil aunties were the cause of the loss of the other when he was a baby.
The boy is a great storyteller and tells tales of a warrior Hanzo, who seeks revenge while battling monsters. Hanzo is Kubo’s missing father.
Through a series of events Kubo finds himself in the middle of a blizzard with a straight-talking monkey caring for him. The monkey, voiced by Charlize Theron, is likable even though she’s the strict voice along the way. Kubo finds himself not only being cared for by Monkey but also by a beetle, ‘Beetle’, who tells him he used to be a samurai warrior with his father.
The adventure is sprinkled with humour, thanks to the interaction between Monkey and Beetle as the odd couple who have a love/hate relationship.
The accompanying soundtrack is a melancholic mix of drums and plucking from Kubo’s Samisen, a traditional Japanese three-stringed lute.
Matthew McConaughey voices the character of Beetle, and before you ask, no, Beetle does not take his shirt off.
Ralph Fiennes and Rooney Mara voice The Moon King and The Sisters, respectively.
There’s a whiff of ‘Mulan’ and ‘Song of the Sea’ about the film, but where ‘Mulan’ was clearly very Disney, ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ is less so, and therefore more ‘Song of the Sea’.
Some points are genuinely disturbing, and the theme of mortality is addressed head on. While it has a ‘PG’ rating, this is no kids’ film, and though it has more humour than ‘Song of The Sea’ I still can’t see any child really enjoying it.
‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ is a triumph technically and visually and is a really complex film—perhaps too complex for the audience it seems to be marketed to.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Review: Kubo and the Two Strings
