 Taking place in 1886, we meet adventurer Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman). Frosts specialty is the seeking out and proving the existence of modern mythical creatures, which could lead to his dream of being accepted into the Society of Great Men, lead by Lord Piggot-Dunceby (Stephen Fry). To prove himself worthy, Frost makes his next mission to prove the existence of the elusive Sasquatch, after receiving a letter that claims them to be real.
Frost then travels to the Pacific Northwest and soon meets the Sasquatch (Zach Galifianakis), who speaks perfect English and claims to be the one who wrote the letter that lead Frost here. His motivation is to have Frost help him find his relatives, the Yetis, so that he can find a home and not be so lonely anymore. Frost agrees to help, and get assistance from his old lover, Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana), who has a map to the Himalayas, and along the way helps to develop Frost's character. On their tail, however, is a bounty hunter named Willard Stenk (Timothy Olyphant) who has been recruited by Piggot-Dunceby to seek out to kill Frost to ensure the views of the Society of Great Men go unchallenged. Though Stenk provides a constant threat through the film, a lot of the story is about accepting the "different", and looking past one's pride to see the good in that difference. This is perhaps most well-illustrated by the fact that Mr. Link (as Frost calls him) wants to change his name to Susan. On the surface, the simple reason he wants to be called Susan is that he remembers coming across an explorer named Susan who didn't freak out when she saw him, and she was therefore admirable enough to name himself after. It's played for laughs, but at the same time, it's LAIKA once again standing up for certain rights - Mr. Link wants to be referred to as a woman. Something similar comes up in 'ParaNorman' when we find out a certain character is gay, and to me, it's clear that LAIKA is a company that tries to do the right thing. They still have some ground to cover, but they do a better job than many. One thing all of the LAIKA films have had in common up until this point is playing with certain elements of horror. They all have something to fear in them, whether it be having button eyes, zombie attacks, mankind, the list goes on. In fact, "mankind" is a pretty common theme among them, but it's probably nowhere more evident than here. It's not so much about mankind being the hunter, as something like this would usually do, but mankind just being ugly altogether. Nowhere is that more evident than the "Society of Great Men", who are really just a bunch of snobby assholes who want Frost dead just so their conservative views aren't challenged - yeah, LAIKA can get pretty grown up. Of the collection, I'd have to say that this one is easily the most light-hearted (despite all that was just said) and easiest one to show the kids. LAIKA deals with mature subject matter a bit more to simply dub them as "family movies", but this one is also quite a nice story with a likable, well-developed lead. Somewhere between here and 'Boxtrolls', you have the LAIKA films that the whole family can pretty well watch with no real trouble. The others all have at least a little something that's very disturbing, but the storytelling is always great stuff. It's my humble opinion that LAIKA is easily one of the best animation studios out there, and year by year, they are robbed of a potential Oscar (generally by worthy movies), but it seems to go the way of Ghibli - often nominated, never winning, and even Ghibli got theirs for 'Spirited Away'. Regardless of awards, as we wrap up LAIKA month, I can fully admit that I would highly recommend any film within the LAIKA animation collection. 'The Corpse Bride', 'Coraline', 'ParaNorman', 'The Boxtrolls', 'Kubo and the Two Strings' and 'Missing Link' are all super high on my list for beautiful animation, wonderful storytelling, and above all else, not treating their youthful audience as a bunch of goofy, mindless kids. There are mature and even frightening themes within their list, and it may interest one to know that 'The Adventures of Mark Twain', whose Devil figure has pretty well become a disturbing meme nowadays, is theirs as well. LAIKA is a great company, not afraid to "go there", and I can't wait to see what they have in store for their next project.
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 While I consider 'ParaNorman' my favorite title in the LAIKA collection, 'Kubo and the Two Strings' provides that potential coin-flip for yours truly, in that I might consider it the best LAIKA film. It's my opinion that a "best" and "favorite" are separate entities - the "best" being the film you'd recommend anyone watching, and "favorite" being the one that you have a personal attachment with. I think this one gets overlooked far too much, and it's powerful stuff for those of us who don't tend to hide the emotion we get from a good story.
The directorial debut of one, Travis Knight ('Bumblebee'), 'Kubo' is the story of a 12-year-old boy named, well, Kubo (Art Parkinson), whose left eye was taken from his grandfather, the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes), Setting the stage for what's to come, the film lets you know right away that it's not messing around. Kubo takes care of his Mother through the nights, who is evidently suffering from Alzheimer's. He makes a living for them, playing his two-stringed shamisen (a Japanese string instrument, similar to a guitar) for the local villagers, and creating origami magic from his music. The paper and his words tell the tale of a samurai warrior named Hanzo; his father. He never finishes, however, as his Mother warns him not to stay out after dark due to the Moon King, and her two sisters, Karasu and Washi (both Rooney Mara) will get him and take his remaining eye. Kubo learns of the Bon Festival, where the living pay their respects and speak to the dead. Kubo goes to try to communicate with his father, and find out who he really was without all of his warrior glory. This keeps him out late, and Kubo is attacked by the two aforementioned sisters. With the sisters and his grandfather hot on his heels, going after his other eye (it is eventually explained why), Kubo ends up living out his own story, finding himself on a journey to find his father's magical armor, and fighting alongside a protective Monkey known as "Monkey" (Charlize Theron) and a bumbling samurai beetle known as "Beetle" (Matthew McConaughey). I know, unoriginal names, but wait until the end because there's even a reason for that. While 'Coraline' is the obvious fan favorite, I still consider this one to probably be the best overall. There's so much imagination and magic with so many underlying grown-up themes, it's one I feel the whole family could watch and get something out of, quite easily. Although, as LAIKA goes, I have to warn that there's some petty creepy stuff going on in this film - like a kid whose grandfather took his damn eye when he was a baby, and wants his other one for whatever the hell reason (again, explained eventually). So, like the whole "button eye" thing in 'Coraline', I could see things getting uncomfortable for the young ones. Still, that creepy plot-line aside, there's plenty of really beautiful animation, and awesome set pieces (including an underwater eye garden... Jesus, what's with LAIKA and eye stuff?), plus this has a really catchy soundtrack, using the shamisen. There's even a half-decent cover of 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' during the end credits. It earned two Oscar nominations, including Best Animated Feature and Best Visual Effects, losing them to 'Zootopia' and 'The Jungle Book', respectively (both well-earned). Finally, it's the highest-ranked LAIKA film on Rotten Tomatoes with a whopping 97%. So maybe all of that means very little nowadays, but one can still look at that and say that the film is, overall, well-liked. Accolades aside, I personally love it based on how much imagination was put into it. I consider it the idea of an anime-style film, but using LAIKA's stop-motion model. While that idea might turn a few people off, I just think it adds to the creativity of it all. Watching this film, at least for myself, is kinda like sitting through someone else's dream. It's beautifully shot, the characters are fantastical, the sets themselves are incredibly dream-like at times, and when it's all over, that cover song sends you off with a bit of a lullaby tone. It's a wonderful film, it gets deep, and I highly recommend checking it out if you're in the mood for a really cool adventure.  In the grand scheme of the LAIKA collection (at least the 6 full-length stop-motion features), I think it's safe to say that this one's likely my least favorite of the bunch. That's saying a lot about how much I enjoy LAIKA studios' creations though, because I still like this one quite a bit. It's just a touch more low-brow and gross-out than the others.
LAIKA likes to play with horror elements, while maintaining a light-hearted, comedic tone - this one uses gross-out stuff. 'ParaNorman' was a modern B zombie movie, 'Coraline' is a bit of a 'Body Snatchers' thing, and 'The Corpse Bride' is a little more of an old school 'Bride of Frankenstein' deal (very loosely). That's how I see them, anyway. They all seem to be a bit of a love letter to older styles. The rest will be covered as the reviews for the month continue, but this one is a neat way of doing the reverse fear factor, where the real person to fear is scarier than the "threat" at hand - which, by the way, 'ParaNorman' already did, but there IS more morality to this than just that. Based on the children's novel, 'Here Be Monsters' by Alan Snow, the film tells the tale of a human boy known only as "Eggs" (Isaac Hempstead Wright) who is raised by a community of creatures called Boxtrolls. These creatures come out at night, after curfew, in a town called Cheesebridge. They basically come into town, steal a bunch of seemingly useless stuff, and retreat into their underground home. What they steal helps their community function, and the mean no harm to anyone, least of all Eggs. The town hates them, however, and accuses them of stealing a baby referred to as the "Trubshaw Baby", who we realize from the get-go is Eggs. The town villain, Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) wants nothing more than a White Hat, which is a high class status symbol that will allow him to sit at a VIP table and taste cheese - even if it does make him react, shall we say, negatively. Lord Portley-Rind (Jared Harris) strikes a deal with him that if he can exterminate all of the "evil" Boxtrolls, he will receive his own white hat. Everything happens very quickly, earning the movie extra points for fast set-up that one can follow very easily. One by one, the Boxtrolls get captured, and before long, Eggs sets out into the light where, with the help of Rind's daughter, Winnie (Elle Fanning), he hopes to rescue his underground family, and bring to the attention of all the townsfolk that Boxtrolls are not to be feared. I claim this one as my least favorite due to a few things that are easier to nitpick about it. The big one, for me, is how the hell Eggs can speak English when he was raised from his baby years by a bunch of grunting, gibberish-talking trolls. There's a few other things, but none of it actually ruins the movie for what it's trying to do. It's like bowling and picking up a spare rather than getting a strike. It's good, but a little adjustment would have made it better. Again, nitpicks. The fact of the matter is, it's aimed at kids, so it works just fine. But maybe that's part of my personal disappointment as well. Up until now, these movies had a genuine creepiness to them, and this is where LAIKA starts to lighten things up a bit. There's more to appreciate here than criticize. The animation and the underground Boxtroll home provides the viewer with a strange and twisted fictional world straight out of a dream. 'Coraline' did it better, but still, this is a well-detailed film with well-detailed sets and characters. The voice acting is great, too. Snatcher is assisted by three people who, in my opinion, really make the film; Mr. Trout (Nick Frost), Mr. Pickles (Richard Ayoade) and Mr. Gristle (Tracy Morgan), all doing great voice work for their respective characters, including Morgan, which means a lot coming from yours truly. Last time I heard him do a voice, he butchered Captain Caveman in 'Scoob'. Then there's the Boxtrolls themselves, voiced primarily by Steve Blum, Dee Bradley Baker, Pat Fraley and Fred Tatasciore - voice actors whose resumes are so huge they're ridiculous. I suppose I look down on this one a little more because I feel like it borrows from things that LAIKA has already done, specifically the moral of unnecessarily fearing something, which 'ParaNorman' did better. But that's also what 'ParaNorman' was all about. This film goes deeper by also giving us a moral about status and whether or not someone really needs it to be happy. So I guess it's easy enough to overlook my nitpickiness on this one, because it's one of those films where as soon as you see a flaw, it's forgiven by something it does well, and the good really does outweigh the bad here. It may not be my favorite in the collection, but it could easily be yours if you give it a chance.  This month, I thought I'd leave an area for some light-hearted material by taking a look at the LAIKA library. In case some of you are wondering about the missing LAIKA titles, here's my review for 'Coraline', and as far as 'The Corpse Bride' goes, I figured it would be best saved for a Tim Burton Month, whenever I decide that will be. We kick things off this month with my favorite film from the studio, 'ParaNorman' - a film I have a strangely deep connection with, but I'll get into why in a bit.
Norman Babcock (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a strange child. People on the streets see him talking to imaginary people, and his family and peers grow weary of his stories that consist of his strange ability to communicate with the dead. That's not so much in a Ouija, seance form as a 'Sixth Sense', straight up talk to them form. His father (Jeff Garlin) and sister, Courtney (Anna Kendrick) give him a particularly hard time with it, as he insists that he has convos with his grandmother, right there in the living room, as she watches B movies with him. However, soon, he makes a friend who accepts him for who he is, named Neil (Tucker Albrizz). Just when things are starting to look up for Norman, his deranged hobo-ish and dying uncle, Mr. Prenderghast, warns him about protecting his town from a witch's curse. Now that his time is almost up, he has to pass the torch to Norman, who he knows can communicate with spirits, and can therefore keep the curse at bay by reading a bedtime story at the witch's grave site. Upon reading from the book he gets from Prenderghast, however, he unleashes a horde of zombies who begin advancing on his hometown of Blithe Hollow. Now it's up to Norman, Neil, and Courtney, along with the aid of school bully, Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and Neil's big brother, Mitch (Casey Affleck) to put a stop to the zombie invasion, and put the witch to rest again. Going back to what I mentioned before about having a deep connection with it, I've always felt a few things about it. I feel like the child version of me can relate to Norman a lot in this, being the misunderstood outcast who's seldom taken seriously. But more than that, without going into it too much, my relationship with my Dad felt very similar to Norman's with his, and I had just lost my father a month before this was released. Something about it really spoke to me, and even taught me a thing or two, and one could say it even offered a bit of closure. Odd coming from a film like this, but that's how it all felt when I first saw it. Putting me and my stuff aside, however, there's plenty for anyone to like here. Neil is an extremely likable character who you really urge Norman towards, because he doesn't see him as a loser or a freak, and he's ever in his corner through the whole movie. His big brother is hilarious, being a sort of meat-headed jock type, with a lot of dumb moments. But what really makes his character is a twist about him in the end you don't really see coming. Everyone has a moment or two here though, it's a lot of fun watching such an odd team up once the film gets going. Perhaps the film's best overall message is to not judge a book by its cover, to keep it plain and simple. It's a theme that keeps popping up here and there, not limited to Norman's odd ability, and having people accept him. I like to tell people who are new to it, that it's essentially 'The Sixth Sense' for a younger audience, and instead of relying on scares, it relies on well-timed comedy. I highly recommend this title as a family watch for the Halloween season, being that it made my 20 Family Friendly Halloween Classics list in 2017. There's a lot here for just about anyone watching, complete with comedy, creepy atmosphere, funny characters voiced by talented actors, and it might even make one take a good hard look at oneself. Check it out. It's my highest recommendation on the LAIKA list - yes, even over 'Coraline'. |
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