Two in one night?

[leene_chan]

This weekend, my brother and sister-in-law lent me their DVD of Ponyo. I hadn't even realized it had come out yet...^^; So I watched it over the course of two nights. They insisted that I HAD to watch the English dub rather than the Japanese track--my brother in particular has this huge disdain for people who prefer to watch anime in Japanese. I guess I'm going to have to lie when I give it back. I don't think I'm being unreasonable--as someone who enjoys studying foreign language, I always prefer to watch movies in their native language. =_=

I liked it enough. I thought it was better than Howl, but nowhere near as good as my favorites, Spirited Away and Kiki's Delivery Service. The visuals were absolutely stunning from start to finish, and the Japanese voice acting was better than I expected (Honestly, even though I always watch the Japanese version I think the last Miyazaki film that had good Japanese voice acting was Kiki. Why did he stop using established voice actors?)

I had two big problems with the movie. Number one: indeterminate character motivation. Did this movie even have a villain? Why did anyone want to do what they wanted to do, and why did they decide to do, or not do it? Number two: I didn't give a crap about Ponyo. Which was a problem because the moral of the story turned out to be: Ponyo should be allowed to do whatever Ponyo wants.

Like any five-year-old or its equivalent has enough reason to decide how she wants to live for the rest of her life? Ponyo had no moral compass whatsoever. At least Ariel in The Little Mermaid had the excuse that she was 16 years old and horny. :P

How are we supposed to believe that a kid who probably utters about 5 lines in the entire movie is the heroine we all want to root for? Her father clearly interferes because he cares about her--though it's obvious that she doesn't give a crap about him, even at the end.

And what about Ponyo's mother, the giant absentee parent who earns the right to be the "good guy" just because she's a big, pretty lady?

Yeah, I guess it's obvious that I felt bad for Fujimoto at the end of the movie, even though he was the worst case of Ushiro Bijin (pretty from behind only) that I've ever seen. XD

All in all, I liked watching the movie but the ending kind of killed it for me. Why do all Miyazaki movies gotta end like he just yelled "STOP" in the middle of the action and everyone had to scramble to think up one last line?

Comments

[leene-chan.livejournal.com]

Really? I saw the Legend of Sirius a few years ago, and it wasn't a bad film, even though the title character was a bit of a moron. I mainly was attracted to it because it was the probably the source of the Irwin/Matilda storyline in Legend of Mana. I was very shocked by the similarities, even in the character designs!

I only saw a little bit of the Little Nemo movie when I was younger. I wish I had paid better attention! I remember that, oddly enough, the NES game based off the movie was released several years before the movie appeared in theaters. I'm not sure why, but I was confused....

The Secret of NIMH was one of my favorite movies when I was in elementary school. I've read the book it was based off, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, for my fifth grade English class. It was quite a bit different from the movie (no magic, Nicodemus was younger and didn't die, Jenner was only mentioned in name and wasn't a villain, no dramatic cinder-block sinking in the mud scene...)I liked that in the book, some characters, like Brutus (the rat that attacks Mrs. Brisby with the lightning spear in the rose bush in the movie) were better developed. In the end, the book and the movie were so different that you can't really compare them, though!

I've never seen Cartoon Noir, but from the information on Amazon.com, it seems interesting!