movies: ponyo

In a lot of ways Ponyo was the perfect movie accompaniment to today... while it filled in the time, there wasn't very much to it (and the title of the post may be a little harsh, although Ma and I both admitted that we found ourselves fighting "the drowsy" at difference points).

At the risk of having all the Hayao Miyazaki fans howling for my blood, I have a very hit and miss relationship with the work of Studio Ghibli, Howl's Moving Castle was a complete travesty (it received one of the second lowest rating I've ever dished out)... but I quite enjoyed Spirited Away (although the ending is a bit crap), Kiki's Delivery Service and Porco Rosso... but My Neighbour Totoro left me cold (I spent the whole time waiting for something to actually happen) and then Nausicaä and Laputa just ended up feeling very campy (from memory anyway).

So I would have to say that Ponyo needs to be filed alongside Totoro... not that nothing happens in the story, but it feels very much a movie aimed at kids.

Some of my objections to it may be due to a difference in cultures and some of it may be because of the English translation... but parts of the movie are just plain old weird, even for a Miyazaki film...

Firstly you have the heroine, Ponyo, who doesn't look anything like a fish... in fact she looks like a beanbag with a human head, but nobody (bar one old lady) seems even remotely surprised that this "fish girl" doesn't actually look like a fish (and certainly not the "goldfish" they all keep referring to her as, other than the fact that she's vaguely goldfish coloured)... then there's Ponyo's dad... who isn't a fish at all (in fact he has the Ghibli version of David Bowie going on that seems to crop up in the adult male characters in their movies... Howl suffered from it too), and who seems to need air but at the same time has to keep his feet wet on land. And don't get me started on keeping the Old Folks Home (which seems to be occupied solely by women) inside of giant jellyfish filled with water that isn't water...

The plot just doesn't seem to want to make complete sense. I'm not saying that I didn't understand what was going on, but some of the motivations and reasons for certain things are hazy at best.

I'm sure that Miyazaki fans will tell that that is the whole point and it's left open to interpretation and you need to fill in the blanks yourself and all that stuff... but, to me, it just felt like sloppy storytelling.

I'm willing to give some leeway to the occasionally "crude" animation... this is hand drawn stuff after all, and I think it's more that I'm used to the "high quality" (and mostly CGI these days) stuff that's more common to Disney and Pixar and the like.

But while the foreground and the actual moving animation was occasionally a little bit off, the backgrounds were pretty much consistently beautiful... especially the stuff early in the movie that's seemed to be obviously pencil drawn (you could see the individual pencil marks)... it had a really nice watercoloury feel about it, even if it did also look slightly unreal. It was effectively used though... most obviously during a very hurried driving sequence where the background outside becomes a big green blur of pencil lines. I think the movie progressed to a more traditional background style later in the movie, although I can't say for certain since I think I stopped noticing after a while.

And there are some genuinely beautiful sequences... the whole boating bit after the storm is quite gorgeous...

It also has what has to be the weirdest set of closing credits ever...

So all in all it was okay... not great, but serviceable.

yani's rating: 1 sentient seawater blob out of 5