This is the only movie my 6 year old has watched more than 10 times …well beside Iron Giant.
Don’t mess with the monkey!
Bumping to note that this is now streamable on Netflix. I missed it in the theaters and just streamed it today.
Agree with those who sang its praises.
What the heck, I will sing some praises as well. I thought it was Laika’s best production since Coraline. It is a shame that the movie did not do better at the box office, it really deserves a bigger audience.
And, although it did not win the Oscar, it did win the prestigious AARP “Best Movie for Grownups who Refuse to Grow Up” award.
We saw it last week. Not at all impressed.
I loved the animation, and I see what they were trying to do, but the script was unforgivably herky-jerky and contained an inexplicable amount of terribly cliched dialogue amongst stuff that was trying to be cool and original. Had it been better written it would have been truly great.
Love it myself. Loved the amount of detail that went into the visuals. Loved the mythology that’s sort-of left open ended. Loved how the celestial family’s emotions are… well… lies to themselves. But most of all I loved the first scene the aunties appeared in with Kubo. That scene. That damn scene. When we got out of the theater I spent (no lie) an hour talking about how great that -one- scene was from a directorial perspective. I now get eye-rolls from my friends whenever the subject comes up, because I love -that scene- so damn much!
So yeah, it was an okay movie. 
Utterly gorgeous to look at, scary in places, moving in others, and so worth seeing. Just wonderful.