I’d like to start this off saying that it was very appropriate for me to watch this film at this time in my life. I saw this with my roommate on opening weekend in a near empty theater (such as shame by the way…). Despite sharing the same room as a crying baby and an obnoxious mom who laughed at all the worst jokes, I felt alive in that place. As a student in college studying animation, staring at Laika’s masterwork on screen put all my suspicions to about my decision to rest.The hundreds of thousands of dollars I will be spending to get myself on the right path will be well worth it if I get the opportunity to work on a project like Kubo.

But that’s enough of that, I should talk about the movie itself. While I don’t think that I enjoyed it as much as Coraline, I still think that this work should be applauded. Let’s just get this out of the way, Kubo and the Two Strings is one of the most visually impressive animated movies ever made. It’s breathtaking. It’s well directed, the character designs were top notch, the voice acting was consistently solid, and every shot in the film just gets my imagination going and makes me want to draw. While the themes of the film were excellent, I do feel like the writing was somewhat lacking in some instances. The beginning of the movie was a lot stronger than the rest, which felt much slower in comparison. By the time the main villain’s motives were revealed at the end, I still left my head scratching and I wish they handled it better. Also, the humor missed the mark more often than not, especially when it came to Matthew McConaughey’s goofy character. Still, this film is largely successful and unlike anything else out there. We need more films like this one and I really hope that Laika will have more success in the box office than their films have been getting with this one.