Kubo and the Two Strings

Laika CEO Travis Knight makes his feature directing debut with Kubo and the Two Strings, an ambitious stop-motion fantasy adventure about a would-be storyteller repressed by a “cold, hard, perfect” father figure. This is where it should be noted that Laika is owned by Travis’ father Phil, a co-founder of Nike and one of the richest men in the country. I’m not sure how to apply that information, which pretty much sums up everything good but not great about Kubo. It feels like the film could (or should) be deeply personal, but it’s also a nonspecific tangle of cultural and thematic threads, with too much clutter and not enough urgency. The whole of Kubo ends up less satisfying than the sum of its set pieces … but what jaw-dropping set pieces! Kubo takes your breath away every few minutes, even as it keeps dropping more rules, back stories, explanations and stories within stories into the mix.