The Unseen Movie Review

Howl's Moving Castle

After a few years on a steady diet of computer animated movies, as amusing as the likes of Shrek and Toy Story may have been, when Hayao Miyazaki’s whimsical, dream-like Spirited Away finally made it to the UK it seemed to prompt a mini revolution. For the first time since the dystopian sci-fi world of Akira hit our screens in the late 1980s, everyone seemed to be into Japanese animation.

As technologically inventive as a lot of the American computer animated films may have been, and as amusing as the scripts and characters, they lacked that real escapism of genuinely original imagination. Miyazaki’s hand-drawn Anime style, packed with weird and wonderful creatures and places, seemed a genuinely fresh revelation.

Of course, what many failed to realise was that Miyazaki had been making such films for decades, lauded by those in the know as the Walt Disney of Japan for his part in helping vastly to expand the reach of Japanese animation since the 1970s. And Howl’s Moving Castle is but his latest addition to an illustrious line of movies which really are best described as magical.

Yet at the same time, this is quite evidently an attempt to follow on from the international success of Spirited Away – not to mention the new-found access to English language voice talent through Miyazaki’s partnership with the Disney Corporation. So whereas the dubbed versions of his earlier films had typically awful, utterly inappropriate voices added unconvincingly to the characters, now the big-name likes of Christian Bale, Billy Crystal and Lauren Bacall have joined the English-language cast to make this the most convincingly dubbed Miyazaki film to date. (You should really still see it with the original Japanese soundtrack first, though…)

This tale of a young girl magically transformed into an old woman and her quest to regain her youth from within the vast, mechanical chicken-legged castle of the benevolent sorcerer Howl will be an ideal thematic sequel for fans of Spirited Away still unfamiliar with much of Miyazaki’s other work. It’s more of the same sort of idea, kept up to the usual exacting standards of Miyazaki’s work with superb animation as love blossoms amidst magic and a clash of good and evil.

For long-term fans of Miyazaki’s work, however, while undeniably beautiful to watch and with an engaging storyline (taken from the children’s novel by British author Diana Wynne Jones), the similarities to Spirited Away will be complemented by strong reminiscences of earlier works Kiki’s Delivery Service, Castle in the Sky and Princess Mononoke. This may be good or bad, depending on whether you are a fan of Miyazaki for his recurring themes and style or for his rampant originality – if the latter, you are likely to be slightly disappointed.

For everyone else, however, this remains a charming and delightful movie, just as was its immediate predecessor. If you enjoyed Spirited Away you should certainly check this out, and if you’ve never seen a Miyazaki film before, this is a near-perfect introduction, splicing as it does elements from so many of his previous movies into one absorbing, visually luscious whole. Without a doubt one of the best animated films of the year.

posted by Nosemonkey @ 4:24 AM