‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ strums stop-motion wonder

Pixar gets all the attention among American animation studios for its singular artistic vision, but over the course of four films now, stop-motion animation studio Laika has built up a body of work almost as impressive as Pixar’s early output, with a creative voice that’s just as distinctive.

The movie’s beginning takes place On December 22, 2014, when Laika and Focus Features announced that the production will began on a 3D stop-motion animated film Kubo and the Two Strings.

And now, the bad news.

More so than with any of Laika’s past films, Kubo feels like the flawless fit for the studio’s stop-motion style of animation, and the technique adds an extra dimension to the story that goes well beyond making it look different than other animated features. Even though he is the CEO of Laika and son of the studio’s benefactor, Nike founder and mogul Phil Knight, this is the first Laika film Travis has directed.

The journey’s one-eyed hero, Kubo (voiced by Art Parkinson), wakes up to care for his sick mother before making his daily trek down to the village to thrill his audience as a busker spinning yarns with a shamisen instrument and enchanted origami.

But, by staying out past dark, Kubo accidentally summons spirits from their past, unleashing his spooky twin aunts (both voiced by Rooney Mara) and later the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes), himself. Only three enchanted objects can protect him, and Kubo must set out to acquire them, accompanied only by the animated totem of a monkey (Charlize Theron) and a samurai who has been transformed into a man-sized beetle (Matthew McConaughey) and whose only vague human memories are of serving Kubo’s father.

Kubo, a young boy with bangs draped over his patched eye, is no traditional warrior. Laika has never been a studio to tread lightly around adult themes in their animated films – but while “Coraline” and “ParaNorman” aren’t short on death, “Kubo” gets to the emotional core with a story so saturated with loss that it becomes its own texture, something as visceral as the sumptuously animated hair or backgrounds. Now if you’re already sold and plan to see Kubo and the Two Strings sometime this weekend (or the next), maybe you might want to hold off on watching some of these featurettes as they will contain elements that could be considered spoilers.

Kubo fully embraces its mythological leanings to create a vibrant, textured world for this all to play out.

Kubo (Art Parkinson) is a young Japanese boy with only one eye.

Among the supporting cast members, Rooney Mara and Ralph Fiennes both effectively raise the threat level of their respective villain characters with their voice work, and George Takei’s relatively brief cameo – you’ll know it when you hear it – succeeds in providing a amusing moment that avoids taking you out of the story. The writers overload the story’s arms with enchanted objects that Kubo must find, and/or never lose, and/or learn how to control using his vaguely defined personal magic.

Specializing in stop-motion and digital animation, Laika presents an awe-inspiring, beautifully rendered fantasy set in ancient Japan.

The extraordinary visuals of “Kubo” will still wow you if you wait for Redbox, but they won’t make you gasp. Yet numerous film’s characters – even Kubo, as well as many of his actions and the objects he encounters – represent more than one thing. “It pulls you so effortlessly into its shifting, dreamlike world that you can be forgiven for forgetting that Kubo and the many unusual characters he meets are themselves puppets, meticulously designed and manipulated one costly frame at a time”. The origami sequences are exquisite and I was completely caught up in this make believe world. “Old ideas are being dusted off and being regurgitated, but we’re fighting the good fight of trying to tell new and original stories, which has become increasingly hard in this atmosphere”.