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Kubo is a Stud

The best animated films don't all come from Pixar and Dreamworks. There is also Laika, a film company that specializes in stop motion animation. Stop motion is a technique that physically manipulates an object so that it appears to move on its own.

I have always loved this technique since I saw the great Ray Harryhausen films, including "Mighty Joe Young", "The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad", "Jason and the Argonauts", and my personal favorite, "The Beast of 20,000 Fathoms,"which was based on a Ray Bradbury story.

The latest from Laika is "Kubo and the Two Strings", a mythological story set in ancient Japan. Kubo, voiced by Art Parkinson, is a young boy who wears a black eye patch because he is missing one of his eyes. When we first meet Kubo, he is on a small boat with his mother and they are caught in a storm of the century. They end up washing ashore and his mother is gravely injured.

They are holed up in a cave where she implores him to never be caught outside after dark, because it could result in evil spirits killing him. These are the same spirits that caused him to lose one of his eyes. At night he stays indoors with his mother, but during the day, Kubo wanders into a nearby village where he demonstrates magical powers that allow him to cause origami looking objects to appear and dance around when he plays his odd looking guitar. The locals flock to see him play and it's easy to see why. It's breathtaking stuff.

One day, Kubo makes the mistake of not returning to the cave before darkness and his mother's warnings come to pass. He is being pursued by his aunts, both of whom are voiced by Rooney Mara, and they look a bit like the wicked witch in "The Wizard of Oz." To me, they are by far the scariest characters here. Also in pursuit is his evil wizard grandfather (Ralph Fiennes).

Kubo does have allies, though, in a talking monkey (Charlize Theron) and a giant flying insect (Matthew McConaughey), who serves as the partially comedic one, necessary for a tale that wants to appeal to the kiddies. Everything has been laid out for the required good versus evil battles, and these battles are really fun to watch.

Plot isn't the main driver here. Rather, it's the overall look of this beautifully made film, and it's as impressive in that department as any full-length animated film in recent memory. Underneath it all are Buddhist beliefs that deal with life, death, and the way we handle these things. Despite a slight lacking of an extraordinarily strong story, "Kubo and the Two Strings" may turn out to be the best animated feature of the year and Kubo may become a modern day hero.