Avis des critiques

Kubo's defense of his world is an argument of behalf of the kind of animation he and Laika both perform so well: human, organic, dense in visual detail, and deft in its blending of the impossible (in Laika's case, the digitally rendered) with the lovingly handmade.

In the topography of the imagination, there are no discernible trails leading from one location to the next. The greatness of Kubo and the Two Strings is convincing the audience to understand that immediately and intuit their way through a narrative that must be experienced to be understood. Director Travis Knight and his animators make Kubo's street performance a model for the film itself, which constructs an entire world out of origami paper.

Another stunning achievement from the Laika animation studio... Intensely creepy villains aside, this is Laika's brightest film to date, in both its dazzling colors and its core of irrepressible joy. The hero, an Orpheus-like figure who plays a samisen to charm origami paper into flying creatures, is sensitive and kind, and his adventure becomes a beautiful and nuanced allegory about maturing into adulthood.

The action is gorgeously fluid, the idiosyncratic 3-D visual conceits (including floating eyeballs undersea) are startling, and the story and its metaphors resolve in unexpected and moving ways. The director, Travis Knight, has put together a picture that hits a lot of all-ages-entertainment sweet spots while avoiding hackneyed conventions, and ends up delivering what feels like a sincere family-friendly message.

Older viewers will tune in to its melancholy — its battles between memory and loss, its themes of filial piety and betrayal — while younger ones will dig the more basic emotions of Kubo's epic journey. It's also why I can't tell you more about that final shot, or why it's so beautiful. It will leave some relieved, others reflective. It is an image of both joy and unreachable sadness, not unlike the movie itself.

On a formal level, the combination of old-fashioned stop-motion animation and cutting-edge CGI endow the film with a lush materiality, at once fluid and deeply corporeal. Complementing the film's symbolic promotion of maintaining traditional practices in the modern world, this mixture of old and new technology mirrors Kubo's magical use of origami puppet theater to bring his own past to life.