Ponyo, or Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea if you live in a country more tolerant of long titles is basically The Little Mermaid but with Studio Ghibli production standards, which let me remind you make "Sky High" production standards drop to the bottom of the sea, right thru the ground into the depths of hell. There are some computer-animated images here and there but for the most part it's hand drawn. And I've loved how they never really updated the looks of their movies, they just upped the shading, colour palette and overall quality without making it non truthful to the old movies. But seriously, this movie looks so much better than Howl's Moving Castle, and that was only 3 years ago. The sea looks beautiful and so do the backgrounds and especially the wave scene.
And another thing that shocked me was the acting. The part of Sows-ske is a Cyrus and I could only tell that Disney was just milking the Hannah Montana fad but he actually does a good job. He doesn't sound too annoying and really sounds like he's 5. I don't really remember the rest of the actors but Ponyo sounds a little too juvenile, Sows-ske's mom sounded pretty good and Ponyo's mom barely got any lines so I can't comment on him whether I wanted to or not. The music again was done by Joe Hisashi, a guy who can make an epic scene a freaking epic scene and is the Koji Kondo of movies. Even if it's just a rather kiddie scene he makes it seem like the most awesome thing you'll ever hear. And sure, the song at the end is pretty freaky yet catchy, like Chocolate Rain.
So the audio and visuals are good, rarely does this matter, this is just a bonus, what does matter is the story. Ponyo is a small 'goldfish' and I put that in quotations because if you think that she's a gold fish then you must be either Stimpy or GIR. She leaves her home under the sea where she lived with her father who kept her in a bubble and ends up in a jar. Sows-ske finds the jar and breaks it open with a rock and cuts his finger and considering his age I expected him to start bawling but instead he checks on the fish who licks his blood which healed him and instead of selling the miracle tongue on the internet for several hundred-million dollars he brings it home. After Ponyo says, and I quote "Ponyo, loves, Sows-ske.", Ponyo is sucked back into the sea by strange goo-ey water so strange and goo-ey I wouldn't be surprised if Chaos popped out.
Ponyo's taken back home and floods the town where Sows-ske lives. Luckily, Sows-ske lives on a cliff and after the only, truly gripping scene in the movie where Sows-ske's mother Lisa is being chased by a wave, Ponyo pulls a Sonic the Hedgehog and runs on the water. Then the most sick and wrong scene happens, Ponyo hugs Sows-ske's head and pretty much wraps herself around her. It was so weird, I couldn't help but see what Miyazaki was trying to show us. This movie is about a fish and a five-year-old having a mild romance so in no way, shape or form can this have the hidden message that The Little Mermaid had. In other words, this scene is excused because it's too innocent for innuendo.
Apparently Ponyo's magic works randomly sometimes and makes Sows-ske's toy boat bigger, looking for their mother who went to her job last night and never returned. And that's when Ponyo falls asleep when the boat gets smaller again. Luckily they just find some ground that leads to the senior centre. And that's when something that perplexed me happens, they attempted another action scene of them just running thru a dark and scary cave with a sleeping Ponyo. It probably would have been better if something was chasing them like the Chaos-esque water but no, it just reminds me that this movie revolves around a five-year-old that for some reason makes me appreciate the violence in Princess Mononoke a little bit more. And after that, well, nothing else happens really. Usually Miyazaki films have insane endings but it's like this one left room for a sequel of Sows-ske and Ponyo twenty years later.
Maybe I just had the wrong mindset. I came into that moving, ready to accept no mistakes and when I was walking out, I was just thinking, instead of comparing this to Laputa, how about Kiki's Delivery Service? Nope, still bland. So Ponyo gets a recommendation because on the Miyazaki scale, it's mediocre but on a normal films' scale, it's friggen awesome.
This is a review of Ponyo!!!!
