Graham Annable
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After such fascinating movies as "Coraline" (2009), "ParaNorman" (2012) and "The Boxtrolls" (2014), Laika has created its greatest masterpiece: "Kubo and the Two Strings," a richly detailed and heart-aching story steeped in the powerful imagery of Japanese folk tales.
“Kubo” marks the fourth feature film from Laika Entertainment, which most recently delivered “The Boxtrolls” in 2014, but it’s a dramatic departure from that film’s quirky, cheese-obsessed Brits.
Kubo is the fourth film from the Portland-based Laika — a studio specializing in stop-motion that has turned out features ranging from the solid (2014’s The Boxtrolls) to the sublime (2009’s Coraline) — and the first to be directed by the company’s CEO, Travis Knight.
Since forming 10 years ago, Laika’s output has included the creepy fairy tale “Coraline” (2009) and the eccentric comedy-adventure “The Boxtrolls” (2014).
Off-kilter, dark gems like Coraline (2009), ParaNorman (2012) and The Boxtrolls (2014) have made the Oregon-based independent studio the modern-day standard-bearer for hand-crafted, stop-motion animation, and with Kubo and the Two Strings they raise the bar yet again.
Kubo isn't quite as nightmare-inducing as that film, nor as viscerally unsettling as the pungent body-horror fable The Boxtrolls (2014), which was set in a world strewn with garbage and cheese.
Yet unlike Coraline and Paranorman, its two predecessors from the Laika animation studio, The Boxtrolls doesn’t have the same level of witty or inventive storytelling to match.
They're kinda cute, sure, and they're clever little pacifists who can make gadgets and hide when trouble comes, but they're not compelling subjects for a feature from Laika, the Oregon studio that created "Coraline" and "ParaNorman" and combines stop-motion and computer animation in amazing new ways.
The 3D stop-motion animated The Boxtrolls from Focus Features opens wide at the box office Friday, and looks set to take over the family market from Dolphin Tale 2. Laika , the Animation outfit based in Oregon and responsible for both Paranorman and Coraline which both won Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature have done it again and I think it’s going to be a third Oscar nod for The Boxtrolls, an absolutely delightful cinematic rendering of Alan Snow’s fantastical book, “Here Lies Monsters”.
The Boxtrolls isn't quite as memorable as Laika's Oscar-nominated movies — the 2009 fantasy Coraline and the 2012 kid-horror flick ParaNorman.
The self-stylized descendants of the Brothers Grimm and Neil Gaiman (whose "Coraline" they adapted for their first of three features), Laika seems to yearn for a little more darkness, a touch of Gothic in our children's films — a laudable and very welcome impulse that makes one inclined to celebrate their fanciful grotesqueries on intentions alone.
The filmmakers and stop-motion animators at studio Laika (previously of 2009's " Coraline " and 2012's " ParaNorman ") are shaping up to be the offbeat, less mainstream cousins of Pixar, creating worlds of dark aesthetic whimsy at the service of thematically heady, provocatively relevant ideas.
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Directed by Henry Selick
influenced The Boxtrolls (2014)
Themes Visuals
Elegantly presenting issues surrounding social stature, materialism, and how they warp our sense of identity, The Boxtrolls engrosses with a child-friendly moodiness reminiscent of Henry Selick’s mid-‘90s family features James and the Giant Peach and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Laika used the technique in "ParaNorman" and "Coraline," and other prominent examples include Tim Burton's "Corpse Bride" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas."
Breaking from the pack of clean, bright, primary-color-filled animated movies, and pledging more allegiance to oddball films like The Nightmare Before Christmas, LAIKA’s third feature (the debut from co-directors Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable) presents a grimy fantasy world where the heroic arrives wearing sooty shades of brown, gray and black.
The vaguely European setting, the steam-punk ethos, and the 1930s costuming come off as not-exactly-cheap knock-offs of classics like The Triplets of Belleville , Corpse Bride , Coraline , and The Nightmare Before Christmas .
All the best animated films with a hint of Halloween have been stop motion animation or digital efforts that duplicate that hand-molded model look — “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Coraline.”
When I was a kid I saw both David Lean's " Oliver Twist " and Carol Reed's " Oliver!
In the tradition of so many other kidlit-to-cartoon adaptations, from “Shrek” to “How to Train Your Dragon,” the writers have taken only the thinnest sliver of inspiration from the source material — in this case, the Steampunk city of Ratbridge (rechristened Cheesebridge for the film) and the whimsical species of boxtrolls.
And, as the scheming Chef, Christine Baranski (2014's " Into the Woods ") has a field day digging into her villainous part, a sort of female counterpart to Ben Kingsley's Archibald Snatcher from 2014's " The Boxtrolls ."
It's unlikely to become a cultural juggernaut on the level of something like "Frozen," but I think it is as enjoyable.
Trolls can be tricky that way, though there are no shortage of the cartoon buggers on the way, from the magical support crew seen in last year’s “Frozen” to a pair of upcoming DreamWorks Animation features (Guillermo del Toro’s “Trollhunters” and another pic based on the frizzy-haired Danish toy line).
While the visuals shine like gorgeous watercolor paintings, bursting with life, and energy that we’ve seen in Laika’s The Boxtrolls , and ParaNorman .