Film Review - Ponyo
The Master of Japanese Animation Comes Up A Little Light
In the past, the revered auteur Hayao Miyazaki has been able to overcome the stigma of the American view of animation -- it's for the kids, so pander appropriately -- and deliver one stunning film after another. His visuals come from the mind of a man who never lost his grasp of what childhood innocence means, which is probably why his films manage to captivate across the demographics.
Thanks to Disney, stateside audiences have been fortunate enough to receive theatrical American-voiced productions of Miyazaki's late career films, most notably his masterpieces, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. So, with all this pedigree and hyperbole in place, Disney's presentation of Miyazaki's latest film, Ponyo, comes as something of a disappointment.
One For The Kiddies
Ponyo never condescends to its admittedly younger target audience. And, from beginning to end, it's a Miyazaki film through and through - strange, hidden worlds filled with mystical creatures, the struggle between the magical/natural world and the industrial one all painted with an eye-popping, almost psychedelic palette.
Check, check and check. What seems to be missing is the level of character and story detail Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli cohorts have poured into nearly every other film they have made. Also, Miyazaki's prior films tend to have a darker underbelly - even in My Neighbor Totoro, one of the most youthfully-aimed of Miyazaki's films, there's a sense of threat in the magical world to offset all the benevolence.
Feeling Fine Through The End Of The World
What's so odd about the absence of threat in Ponyo is the subject matter - the impending apocalypse (no, really). Little Ponyo (voiced by Noah Lindsey Cyrus younger sister of, yep, you guessed it, Miley) -- a fishy, human-faced creature -- escapes her father's (Liam Neeson) protective clutch to latch on to a human boy in a Japanese port town, Sosuke (Frankie Jonas, the youngest of The Jonas Brothers).
Ponyo's father, Fujimoto (the guy dresses like Willy Wonka's evil, glam rock twin) keeps the sea, and consequently, the entire Earth, in balance by feeding his elixirs to the animals and the ocean. When Ponyo sucks up all the magic elixirs, thus allowing her to satisfy her Little Mermaid/Pinocchio complex and become a human girl, everything gets knocked out of whack.
Tsunamis ensue, as does a slightly under cooked tale of true love (at age five no less!) set in Miyazaki's typically bizarre sense of imagination.
When Worlds Collide
Miyazaki's oeuvre almost always focuses on the intersection of nature and modern society and whether the two opposing worlds will collide or coexist. Despite a promising opening sequence -- the tankers sit in the water around the port before we dip below the surface, into a beautiful ocean brimming with life -- the visual metaphor never really comes together in Ponyo.
There's a lot of blatant contradiction -- one second Fujimoto is plotting against the human world, later, the next, he's desperate to save it -- and just lazy plotting. What saves Ponyo is the fact, as stated before, that this is undoubtedly a Miyazaki film.
He still has an eye for the disruption of family and Sosuke's relationship with his mother (Tina Fey) and absent father (Matt Damon, with about five lines) gives Ponyo a strong emotional backbone. But really, if there's any reason to see Ponyo if you're older than 10 and not the parent accompanying said child, it's the visual feast Miyazaki puts on display.
From a purely image-based standpoint, Ponyo ranks up with the best of Studio Ghibli's films, and even when things sag in between, the set pieces are beautiful. With so few hand drawn animated films out on the market (although Disney-Pixar is getting back in the game), the artistry in Ponyo still prevails, despite the film's narrative failures.
RATING: 3 out of 5 stars
VERDICT: Even a lightweight Miyazaki film beats the hell out of any other kids-flavored flick this summer, except for Up. Is Ponyo one of the master's best? Certainly not. Would you be doing yourself a favor going to see this with your kid instead of G-Force? Probably.
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