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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 anticlimactic, unlike the tests faced by the heroine of Spirited Away. I had the suspicion several times that perhaps Disney cut things out for its U.S. release – since the plot lacked some of the depth and richness in its backstory of many of Miyazaki’s other works. A bit of searching shows I was wrong – this is the film Hayao Miyazaki intended. He is quoted in the L.A. Daily News as saying: “I intentionally tried to simplify things for this film. I figured that this movie should be seen by 5-year-olds, since they are the main characters. So I made the storytelling easy to understand. I figured they could watch it later as adults and understand the more complex parts of it, so I didn’t foreground those elements.” In hindsight he may be right — from a young person’s perspective what matters is just the magical relation between two young children, and from their perspective everything else, the fate of the cosmos, even, hinges on that.

Like most of his films, there is an ecological message here, that humans tend to ignore the wonders around them and treat carelessly the gift of the earth. Here it is expressed in an entertaining and magical story that will be easily understood by children. While, from the perspective of an adult viewer, I found this film less fully satisfying than masterpieces like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, or even the delicate and rich My Neighbor Totoro – which is the closest in spirit to this film – still it contains some remarkable and beautiful imagery and delightful moments. Well worth watching, and a very lovely and simple introduction to the work of one of the most inventive and important animated storytellers alive. There’s no one else quite like him, and we’re lucky to have another Miyazaki film, especially given his initial plans to retire upon completing the Academy Award-winning Spirited Away. Highly recommended.

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 environment. Watching Ponyo at times feels like people-watching. And, like people watching, it all amounts to a perplexing joy.

It’s strangely relaxing to watch his visually vibrant and animated characters bring color to such banalities as eating soup and ham. If you’ve watched Howl’s Moving Castle and the delicious scene of Howl cooking bacon and eggs, then you’ve seen Miyazaki do this before. The man has an eye for the small details of life. This is not to say that the movie is not forward moving. There are some semblances of Western story telling. For instance, Ponyo’s father who is not particularly fond of humans is constantly seeking out Ponyo to bring her back home. However, as dramatic as this may be, it’s marginal to the rest of the story. Miyazaki is less interested in the need for conflict and more interested in those unexplainable things that draw two people to each other.

Ponyo loves Sosuke!
Hayao Miyazaki is one of those rare directors who can take the magic of nature and childhood, then somehow capture it for the screen.

And his tenth Ghibli movie “Ponyo” is no exception — it’s a reimagined tale of a “little mermaid” who wants to become human so she can be with a little human boy she loves. It’s a simple story told in a simple manner (occasionally TOO simple), but it has a lush oceanic beauty and an innocent sweetness that really capture your heart and imagination.

A little boy named Sosuke finds a tiny “goldfish” with a human face on a beach, trapped in a bottle. He names her Ponyo, and goes to great lengths to care for his little fishy friend.

But then the sea wizard Fujimoto, Ponyo’s overprotective dad, appears and snatches Ponyo back into the sea — and she decides that she wants to become human so she can be with Sosuke. Having tasted a bit of Sosuke’s blood, she sprouts chickenleggy limbs and starts to change, but inadvertently disrupts a magical well that causes the moon to drop, the seas to rise over the land, and prehistoric magic to rise once more.

Sosuke and Ponyo are delighted to be reunited, despite the raging storm that is engulfing the city and causing ships to go missing. While the children go searching for Sosuke’s missing mother, Fujimoto struggles to fix the balance of nature before the entire world is destroyed, with the help of Ponyo’s sea goddess mother. The only hope of restoring balance lies in Ponyo and Sosuke — and if Sosuke’s love is not true, then Ponyo will be reduced to sea foam.

Compared to Miyazaki’s other movies, “Ponyo” is a very simple story — it’s basically a boy-meets-fishgirl story, with lots of children running around being adorable and exquisite looks at the sea. Even its theme is simple — the story is dependent on on true selfless love and how it knows no boundaries of age, experience or even species. Not to mention parents letting go of their children.

If there’s a downside to the story, it’s the lack of internal conflict. Example: the “test” that Fujimoto and the sea goddess use for Sosuke… well, it’s far less impressive than it seems.

And Miyazaki does not disappoint animationwise — he conjures a waterworld of luminous sea life, sparkling ships, prehistoric creatures, finned submarines and a town that has been swallowed by the sea (complete with boats floating over the rooftops). It’s an exquisite piece of work that turns the ocean into a magical, otherworldly realm where wizards work in coral-encrusted towers and shimmering jellyfish take little mermaids to the surface.

Ponyo herself provides a lot of the movie’s charm — she’s effusive, hyperactive, has a babylike fascination with the human world (“HAM!”), and an array of handy magical powers. Sosuke is a likable lad who is fascinated by Ponyo and her world, and Fujimoto makes a enjoyable anti-hero — spindly, gaunt and with a mane of messy red hair, he’s like a rock’n'roll embodiment of parental stress.

The extras are pretty promising on this particular edition, as you’d expect with a Ghibli film — a slew of documentaries and interviews (including with Miyazaki himself), storyboards, explorations of the story’s background. And most striking is the “World of Ghibli,” an interactive creation which apparently allows people to “enter” the worlds of various Miyazaki movies — “Ponyo’s,” “Kiki’s,” “Castle in the Sky’s,” and so on.

“Ponyo” is simpler and more childlike fare than most of Miyazaki’s past films, but it’s still a sweet and lushly-animated piece of work. At the very least, it will transport you to a magical childhood.

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Amazon.com
Ponyo confirms Academy Award®-winning director Hayao Miyazaki’s reputation as one of the most imaginative filmmakers working today. Loosely based on Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid,” Ponyo is a magical celebration of innocent love and the fragile beauty of the natural world. The daughter of the sea goddess Gran Mamare (voiced by Cate Blanchett) and the alchemist Fujimoto (Liam Neeson), Ponyo (Noah Cyrus) begins life as an adventurous little goldfish. Chafing at her father’s restrictions, she goes in search of adventure and meets Sosuke (Frankie Jonas), a good-natured 5-year-old who lives by the sea. Sosuke adopts Ponyo and quickly wins her heart. Fujimoto uses magic to bring her back, but Ponyo’s love for Sosuke proves stronger than his elixirs. She transforms herself into a human girl and returns to him during a spectacular storm at sea, but her metamorphosis upsets the balance of nature, precipitating a crisis only Gran Mamare can resolve. Ponyo contains fantastic moments that suggest dreams– and reassert the power of hand-drawn animation to create memorable fantasies: No effects-laden Hollywood feature can match the wonder of Ponyo running along the tops of crashing waves on her way back to Sosuke. Ponyo is closer in tone to My Neighbor Totoro than Spirited Away or Howl’s Moving Castle, and will appeal to audiences of all ages, including small children. The #1 film in Japan in 2008, Ponyo earned more than ¥14.9 billion (over US$155 million) to become the 8th highest grossing film in Japanese history. (Rated G: A few scary moments, alcohol use) –Charles Solomon

Ponyo Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo Description:

• Amazon Sales Rank: #252 in DVD
• Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
• Released on: 2010-03-02
• Rating: G (General Audience)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Animated, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English, Japanese, French
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: English, French
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .40 pounds
• Running time: 103 minutes

Features

• ISBN13: 0786936791761
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

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