Review: Ponyo

After ranking Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away as one of my favourite films of the last decade I was eagerly awaiting Ponyo the new offering from Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli and the first he has directed since the impressive Howl's Moving Castle. Fans of the Ghibli animation won't be disappointed as again we are plunged into the world of the sea and the neighbouring island as Ponyo turns from a fish into a little girl. Miyazaki has always excelled at combining the fantasy world and real-life issues and here we see the underwater world that Ponyo lives in intersposed with domestic issues of a father not seeing his family as he his out at sea as well as treatment of the elderly in care homes. So on one hand as an animation it excels and like with The Princess and The Frog, it demonstrates that in this computer-animated world there is still room for hand-drawn animated features.

Where the film falls down is in its story whereas both Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle had complex multi-layered stories, the story in Ponyo is very slight indeed. This may have something to do with Disney's involvement in the film as the themes revolve around very young love and how protective parents should be. The American voice cast is also very much marketed towards a younger Disney-fied audience as we have Noah (sister of Miley) Cyrus and Noah the youngest of the Jonas Brothers, who is too young to be in the band and pass out chastity rings to vulnerable teenage girls. The most misjudged member of the vocal team is Liam Neeson who, as Ponyo's father, seems completely out of place in the film, his booming majestic voice suits Aslan just fine, but he doesn't have the subtle tones needed for a film of this nature. Part of me wonders whether I would've enjoyed it more in its traditional Japanese with subtitles because the American version seems very Americanised indeed.

Overall an interesting film from the Ghibli stable but with an odd choice of voice actors and a very weak narrative it doesn't stand up against classics like Spirited Away and The Cat Returns.