Movie Review: Ponyo On The Cliff

Over at BlogCritics.org, moviejohn has posted a review on Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film, “Ponyo On The Cliff”…

It is often said that older people start to return to a more youthful, childlike state and so it is for 67-year-old master animator, Hayao Miyazaki with his latest film, Ponyo on the Cliff. After making numerous movies that have presented a more mature depth in presenting childhood as in My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away, this time he immerses himself completely into the mind of a five-year-old. It assumes no more life experience than a child at that age and captures only the simple wonder of one who is just beginning to realize what it means to grow up into the human world.

The plot is borrowed somewhat from The Little Mermaid and is even more stripped down and elemental than that film. Like Ariel, the title character, Ponyo (Yuria Nara) is a red goldfish who wants to become a human although she does not have any trace of human traits in the beginning. Also, she and the boy she meets, Sosuke (Hiroki Doi), are only five, which means that this is not a teenage love story but about befriending someone unconditionally as a child before all the worldly complications set in.

The movie has a wondrous underwater opening that is simultaneously a trademark and a departure for a Miyazaki film. The masterful sense of perspective, texture, and movement are all present but the water color and pastel animation here goes for more of a simple children’s drawing palette than a photorealistic one with shadow lighting (except for the villainous or more mysterious characters who are drawn with darker shadows). It is here we see the little goldfish escape in a bubble away to the surface from her sibling schools of fish led by her father, Fujimoto (Joji Tokoro). Once the goldfish escapes, however, she gets her head stuck in a glass jar and washes on shore. There Sosuke finds her and gets her out of the jar by breaking it. He immediately bonds with the goldfish that he names Ponyo perhaps because she is the first one he has directly rescued from harm.

Meanwhile, Ponyo uses the magical powers she has gained from her father to gradually turn herself into a human girl including eventually growing human arms and legs. Fujimoto strongly disapproves of this as he, despite being actually human in form, has abandoned his race on land and settled underwater to raise his children as fish due to the way humans have polluted and mistreated the oceans. This, of course, allows Miyazaki to cycle back to some of his past themes about humans’ responsibility with nature and the imbalance and discord that can result without it.

Despite those familiar themes and the presence of other characters such as Sosuke’s mother, Lisa (Tomoko Yamaguchi), and absentee fisherman father who introduce the themes of fear of parental loss and death, the story is simpler and aimed more squarely at little children than any of Miyazaki’s previous films. The dialogue is also less elliptical, as the film’s focus is on just building the adorable bond between Ponyo and Sosuke, who, as all little children, cutely say exactly what they mean and want (or sometimes spit out water in the case of Ponyo). And the movie has plenty of endearing moments as when Ponyo is trying to figure out how to eat noodles for dinner at Sosuke’s house or when she uses her magical powers to transform Sosuke’s toy boat to float on the flooded island. There is also a quietly memorable scene in which Ponyo calms down a crying baby, which creates one of the story’s crucial turning points.

To read the rest of the review, visit BlogCritics.org