Delightful imagery, boundless joy, innocent love - even a lighter effort by Miyazaki is still an occasion to celebrate
Ponyo is a young fish-girl who loves to explore, but her father, a great wizard of the sea, fears the chaos her untamed powers could unleash upon the world. He's right to worry, since she, like every young undomesticated child, is an elemental force of nature who has little respect for the boundaries that grownups take so seriously. She escapes and meets up with a young boy whose imagination at least is a match for her magical powers - and it is love at first sight. Not romantic love but something more innocent and pure - like the youthful love of nature.
It starts out strong - and contains some of Miyazaki's most delightful and exuberant imagery, as when Ponyo runs blissfully upon the backs of her sisters who are at once giant fish and enormous waves. The story itself as it develops has gaps, moments that don't all add up, and unexplained elements. As another reviewer mentioned, for example, the test that Fujimoto and the sea goddess devise for Sosuke is somewhat...
Blu-ray: A magnificent Blu-ray release that misses perfection due to the lack of the lossless Japanese audio track
In 2008, Studio Ghibli released their latest Hayao Miyazaki film "Ponyo" (aka "Gake no Ue no Ponyo") in Japan and followed with a U.S. release in August 2009. The film which is Miyazaki's eighth film for Studio Ghibli has amassed several awards including the Japanese Academy Prize for Animation of the Year. The film which is budgeted around $34 million dollars made over $199 million worldwide. Where his 1988 film "My Neighbor Totoro" was Miyazaki's tale for older children, this time around for "Ponyo" he wanted to create a film for young children and was inspired from Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid".
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Magical, beautiful and everything that you can expect from Hayao Miyazaki. I was completely in awe when I watched this film. In this day and age, we tend to put so much into CG animated films and rarely do we see hand drawn quality animation anymore. I'm so glad that Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli continues to show this creative style through...
A Fish Out of Water
Miyazaki's films are refreshing for their even pacing and tempered characters. A far cry from the neurosis of Disney characters where everyone is shouting and riding on high octane. Ponyo is almost completely silent in its first 10 or 15 minutes, and even when the dialoug begins it has more of a sobering effect. If you pair that with the gorgeous hand drawn characters and hand painted backgrounds you suddenly remember what animation felt like twenty-plus years ago.
The story of Ponyo is truly Disney-esque on the surface - but only on the surface. A boy, Sosuke, finds a "goldfish" trapped in a jar and frees her. He also gives her the name Ponyo. It doesn't take very long for Ponyo to develop a pet-like affinity for Sosuke, leading her to the decision that she wants to be a human. It's really that simple. The rest is Miyazaki's masterful aptitude for making the plot less important than his signature slice-of life sequences of how people relate to each other and their...
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