Oh look, LAIKA again. For once, I felt like seeing their work in a theater, and so did my dad. Maybe that's because the stop-motion animation studio is trying something different this time: a setting in feudal Japan. You can't really tell from my past reviews, but I'm kind of a sucker for entertainment set thereabout.
A woman, Sariatu (uh, Charlize somebody), and her eye patch-wearing baby barely survive a stormy sea voyage and then make a home in a cave. There is a village nearby, but they have no money for better lodging. About a decade later, Sariatu spends most of the day catatonic, but son Kubo (Art Parkinson) has grown precocious, making a name for himself by telling stories of his samurai dad Hanzo fighting the Moon King's forces -- while illustrating them with moving origami controlled by his magic string instrument, which nobody identifies by name, but I determined it to be a shamisen.
Little does he know how much truth there is to his stories, until the day he neglects his mom's rule to come home by nightfall. The Moon King (Ralph Fiennes, once again playing a main villain in a family feature) is Sariatu's father and can now detect Kubo. The king and his identical other two daughters (both Rooney Mara) will stop at nothing to bring Kubo into their celestial kingdom, which pretty much requires that they blind him and make him learn to enjoy killing Earth mortals.
Now Kubo has a quest to collect three legendary pieces of a samurai's ensemble. He receives help from (1) a snow monkey-shaped charm that has become basically real, imbued with Sariatu's voice and a blunt, dour, tough-love demeanor; (2) an independently mobile yet silent paper Hanzo, serving mainly to point the way; and (3) a capable but amnesiac human samurai (Matthew McConaughey) cursed to a large quasi-beetle form, whose unfortunate scenario doesn't prevent him from providing about half the movie's humor.
Speaking of which, this is one case in which I appreciate the humor not for being all that funny but for providing much-needed relief. At least one of the kids in my theater had trouble dealing with many moments. The opening alone is dark enough. It's rare for a young hero to have a permanent disability, however vital to the plot. I believe it's less rare for him to lose a parent or two, even at other relatives' hands. Kubo himself laughs from time to time, but in the end, he can't help feeling that his victorious story is too bittersweet.
What's "funny" in another sense is the combination of complexity and familiarity. You see how I took longer than usual to summarize the plot. It also took longer than usual to sort out what was going on at first, so my dad thought it got off to a slow start. Yet while a few revelations took Kubo by surprise, we saw them coming a mile away. And the mission and action sequences come to resemble a typical video game, which may be what the makers had in mind.
Regardless, Dad and I both liked KatTS a lot. It makes for a colorfully presented fantasy, sometimes delightfully spooky, especially with Kubo's aunts. The graphics look great for the medium. The music, while never involving singing before the end credits, sounds pretty to my western ears. And the somewhat child-unfriendly elements actually can be a welcome change of pace.
LAIKA has had three Best Animated Feature nominations before. This may be the most deserving of all, topping even Coraline. Too bad for the studio it faces tough competition.
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