Ponyo

Title: Ponyo
Rating: 3.5/5
Genre: Animation, Adventure (Family)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Liam Neeson, Tina Fey, Noah Lindsey Cyrus, Frankie Jonas
Language: Japanese (dubbed)

You’d think this is a film that would have gained a lot of media attention, but since its release I’ve seen next to no mention of it. Another Miyazaki film well past the time he decided to ‘retire,’ some 3 or 4 films back, and with four films reaching the imdb’s “Top 250” you’d think that the fact that the film comes with his name attached would be enough to start a frenzy. Then add the consideration for the dubbing – Studio Ghibli films always have excellent dubbing for the wider audience – with respected actors, and then both then throwing in two young pop stars to handle the lead characters, well lets say when I arrived to discover I had the entire cinema to myself I was a little surprised.

Following the story of Sasuke (Jonas) and his mother Lisa (Fey) who discover a fish (Cyrus) near the beach by his home, he quickly names him Ponyo and promises to look after him unaware of both her magical powers and that she is the daughter of the Father of the Sea, Fujimoto (Neeson). Willing herself a pair of legs, Ponyo unintentionally disrupts the balance of the earth and is hunted for by her father in order to set things right once more.

On the one hand this has everything that I love about his work; there’s the beauty in the simplicity, the warmth of the characters and the intentional ‘mistakes’ as a result of his reluctance to rely on CGI; the boys hair that’s never quite straight or the amorphous nature of the waves as they behave like a living entity. There’s the constant plot development that never slows down, twisting and turning to lend a sense of unpredictability of how the conclusion will be found (even if the actual conclusion is made apparent fairly early on), but this is still far from his best work.

There are too many little points that detract from the believability of the characters; the manner the five year old points out prehistoric fish from the ‘Devonian Age’ and tells us their Latin names more capably than a masters student, or that this child seems to spend more time looking after his stroppy teenager of a mother than the other way around, which despite her being the most realistic of the characters, felt a little out of place in this situation, perhaps acting better as a big sister set the task of looking after Sosuke for a few days. Of the other characters, most of the time is spent with the lead character of Ponyo who behaved as you would expect a child to, complete with both cute moments and the times when you wished she would just stop talking, and the mysterious father of the sea who seems both evil and acting in the best interests of others, and yet no real emotional connection is made. The characters may not be your standard cliché but that fact alone fails to make them interesting and as a result incapable of really engaging with the viewer.

The plot lacks any real form of depth too, feeling driven by a surface kinship between the two lead characters that we are never really privy to rather than anything more, and with such a strong relationship to ‘The Little Mermaid’ (the depressing tale by Hans Christian-Anderson, not the Disney re-imagining) it perhaps could have felt more thorough if kept closer to the original; the notion of the immortal soul as a human in exchange for a shorter life span, the curse of being mute and the terrible pain of growing the feet and having them feel like knives stabbing into your body, even the notably unlikely tragic ending. All of these elements that were avoided could have allowed for further detail to come into the story, evoking a stronger sense of empathy for the plight of Ponyo which was instead made all too childish with an inexplicable random desire to be human.

No, I haven’t forgotten that this is a ‘Family’ film, which normally translates to having children as a target audience. The easy to follow plot, quick pace, beautiful animation and obvious messages about the environment are all elements that would make this an excellent candidate for their viewing, but its that sub-layer that’s missing. The part of the ‘Family’ film genre title that appeals to the rest of the family, with sub-text, jokes and themes that whilst not inappropriate are more thought provoking and provide an appeal to the wider audience. Ultimately it was this uncharacteristic shallow sense to the overarching story that leaves me a little disappointed.