97% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: A must-see; Watch it in cinemas; I'm buying the DVD
Watch it if you: Are a fan of great animation or stopmotion; Want to watch a visually brilliant kids movie with darker themes; Are a fan of other Laika movies
I saw the trailer for this film ages ago, and I proceeded to forget about it and dismiss it pretty quickly, but I was surprised at how good the reviews were for it, so I decided to go watch it while it was still (only just) in cinemas, and while I was having some down-time from assessments.
I'm so glad I ended up watching this, as I was blown away by the uniqueness of it. It's great having an original film that pushes the boundaries, not only in the way it does its storytelling, but also because it's fantastic stopmotion. I find it amazing that the artists and animators behind this are so dedicated; they could easily have done this digitally, but no, they decided to actually build the set pieces, the costumes, the figurines, hundreds of faces for each character, and so on. That is amazing, and for that reason I really think people should go watch this while it's still in cinemas. It's really good to support these small studios who have such large budgets; if you stick to torrenting or only watching huge franchise films in the cinemas, then you get less original and creative movies, and more generic blockbuster remakes/reboots/sequels.
As I said, I forgot about the trailer so I really had no idea what the film was about, but I can honestly say that the first 20-30 minutes were very very solid. They completely sucked me in and I can't find a single fault in that introductory section. I knew from the start it would be an amazing original story; the premise is fantastical, magical, surreal, and really unique.
The fact that it's a stopmotion film made it even more special. This film comes from the studio and the animator of Coraline, which was amazing, so you know this is going to be great. And, it definitely was. In fact, the way they did this was way better than Coraline, in my opinion.
After the first 20-30 minutes, when we meet the monkey, that's when things kind of plateau for me. I mean, the film is still amazing, but there were a few things they added in that I think could have been left out on the drawing board.
Firstly, I think the film was marketed towards kids (and you can tell because all the trailers ahead of the film were for kids movies), and they tried to pander to kids by adding in a few dumb jokes, but I think the bulk of this film is really quite mature and dark, and I'm not sure if kids would be able to appreciate the film until they get a bit older. So, as a result, some of the jokes sometimes feel a bit out of place (I think I chuckled at maybe 2 of them, 3 tops, and it didn't help that the cinema I was in was almost empty). For example, the film doesn't really explain much of what's going on; it trusts you to make inferences along the way through the visual storytelling (similar to Mad Max: Fury Road). I think this was a great move on their part, because it's great to have a movie where not everything is explained to you, rather, the story builds and builds and builds and it does NOT dumb down and spell things out for you. I think this was a good move on their part, as it makes for a good film, but once again, I'm not sure if the children would really understand it. I think it's more a film geared for older children, e.g. 8 and above.
Secondly, the pacing began to slow down after the first 30 minutes, and while it's necessary for the dark and sombre tone, I'm not sure if the kids could sit still during these moments.
Thirdly, I have a teeny gripe with the voice acting. Don't get me wrong, the voice actors were great. In fact, Kubo was an amazing protagonist; the actor (Art Parkinson, who playes Rickon Stark) was really believable and I just loved the way he said things sometimes, especially the opening line (which is the title of this blog). I also really loved Rooney Mara as The Sisters (who, by the way, looked awesome; their costumes were my favourite in the film). And, while I think Charlize Theron and Matthew McConaughey were great in their voice acting, I just didn't think their voices matched the actual characters. The monkey and the beetle looked so bizarre, and they looked like they would have completely different voices. I must admit though, that I think it's just me, because I had an issue with Elsa from Frozen as well; she just looked too young to have a voice like Idina Menzel's!
In the end, I definitely did NOT realise what this movie was going to be like, and for that it was great. The premise is intriguing and fantastical, the storytelling is so unique, and the film is overall really clever, deep, and sweet. Unfortunately the marketing wasn't that great, so there weren't a lot of people talking about it, but please go see the movie in some legal sort of way to support these small studios and so we can have more amazing original films like this!
A few side notes:
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