Today my commute to the cinema was blocked by a film crew, who had cordoned off the streets to shoot the next Transformers movie. I got to see a whole bunch of tremendously flashy cars, and some even more expensive cameras. Seeing all that puts into perspective just how much money and effort really goes into making even the bad movies. I'm mentioning this because Kubo and the Two Strings must have took a mammoth effort to make, and as guilty as I feel to say it, it is in many respects a bad movie.
Not the visuals though. Kubo is a resplendent thing. The movie is most proud of a giant fluorescent skeleton monster that comes up halfway through, but for me it was the movie's opening scene that was the most impressive, in which a tiny boat fends off a towering tsunami. The problem with Kubo is the attached story, which attempts to string these glorious visuals together.
Kubo is essentially a prophesy movie, in which a boy called Kubo must collect the appropriate plot coupons to defeat some looming big bad who appears far too late into the story. This tried formula is beefed out by padding scenes and clumsy dialogue, which only serves to clutter the movie. The actual story details themselves are weirdly confusing and messy, for instance, Kubo's mother is introduced as suffering memory loss as a consequence of taking a nasty knock to the head, and then we meet a second character who also has memory loss for a totally different reason, and then yet another character comes in by the end who promptly suffers memory loss too, also due to unrelated reasons. It seems like whenever the story is about to stumble into a plot hole, the writers cover it up by magically forcing characters to forget key information, even though it requires ever more exposition to justify it.
Then there is the lamentable casting. It was always regrettable that asian actors only voice the background characters, but I was at least expecting the big name western actors to do a good job in their place. It is most glaring with Charlize Theron, here voicing (both figuratively and literally) a wooden monkey. She is put opposite a Samurai Beetle voiced by Matthew Mc Conaughey. The movie often depends on these two to bounce off one another and provide comic relief, but they have absolutely no chemistry together. In the cinema I sat in, joke after joke was met with awkward silence from the audience.
I really want to recommend Kubo for its visuals alone, but I was bored by the movie so much that I can barely even do that. For a movie that really wants to remind us about the importance of telling stories and forming memories, its a shame that Kubo ends up being a really forgettable story. In the ending credits, we are shown the tremendous work going into animating this movie, so at least I'm going to remember feeling guilty for not liking it. Sorry movie.
Sorry Film Makers, but No.
Today my commute to the cinema was blocked by a film crew, who had cordoned off the streets to shoot the next Transformers movie. I got to see a whole bunch of tremendously flashy cars, and some even more expensive cameras. Seeing all that puts into perspective just how much money and effort really goes into making even the bad movies. I'm mentioning this because Kubo and the Two Strings must have took a mammoth effort to make, and as guilty as I feel to say it, it is in many respects a bad movie.
Not the visuals though. Kubo is a resplendent thing. The movie is most proud of a giant fluorescent skeleton monster that comes up halfway through, but for me it was the movie's opening scene that was the most impressive, in which a tiny boat fends off a towering tsunami. The problem with Kubo is the attached story, which attempts to string these glorious visuals together.
Kubo is essentially a prophesy movie, in which a boy called Kubo must collect the appropriate plot coupons to defeat some looming big bad who appears far too late into the story. This tried formula is beefed out by padding scenes and clumsy dialogue, which only serves to clutter the movie. The actual story details themselves are weirdly confusing and messy, for instance, Kubo's mother is introduced as suffering memory loss as a consequence of taking a nasty knock to the head, and then we meet a second character who also has memory loss for a totally different reason, and then yet another character comes in by the end who promptly suffers memory loss too, also due to unrelated reasons. It seems like whenever the story is about to stumble into a plot hole, the writers cover it up by magically forcing characters to forget key information, even though it requires ever more exposition to justify it.
Then there is the lamentable casting. It was always regrettable that asian actors only voice the background characters, but I was at least expecting the big name western actors to do a good job in their place. It is most glaring with Charlize Theron, here voicing (both figuratively and literally) a wooden monkey. She is put opposite a Samurai Beetle voiced by Matthew Mc Conaughey. The movie often depends on these two to bounce off one another and provide comic relief, but they have absolutely no chemistry together. In the cinema I sat in, joke after joke was met with awkward silence from the audience.
I really want to recommend Kubo for its visuals alone, but I was bored by the movie so much that I can barely even do that. For a movie that really wants to remind us about the importance of telling stories and forming memories, its a shame that Kubo ends up being a really forgettable story. In the ending credits, we are shown the tremendous work going into animating this movie, so at least I'm going to remember feeling guilty for not liking it. Sorry movie.