Review: Ponyo (2009)

[Mark R. Leeper]

                               PONYO
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: A magical "goldfish" turns herself human to
     learn about the real humans.  A five-year-old adopts
     her, and the two find they love each other.  But dark
     forces from the sea bring a natural disaster in
     vengeance for her misbehavior and the boy and the
     girl-fish have to go find the boy's mother.  This film
     is really aimed at young children.  Hayao Miyazaki is
     off his game with this film that has weaker art and
     animation than his usual films and a script that
     needed another draft or two.  Rating: low +1 (-4 to +4)
     or 5/10

Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most respected makers of animated
films in the world.  His Studio Ghibli has given us classic films
like MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, PRINCESS MONONOKE, and SPIRITED AWAY.  (A
treasured memory was sitting across the aisle from him at the North
American premiere of SPIRITED AWAY.)  Sadly, I think his PONYO is
several steps backward for him.  That is not entirely his fault.
The animation of PONYO is flat and dull, but part of that is that
he does not obviously use computer animation and he is competing
with animators like Pixar.  I can accept that he does not have the
detail that Pixar has in their images, but PONYO animation looks
primitive compared to previous Miyazaki films such as SPIRITED
AWAY.  Near the opening of the film is a flood of jellyfish filling
the screen.  It seems intended to convey an awe of the wonder and
beauty of sea life.  But as a hand drawing it loses the edge of
realism that would have made it look believable.  It ends up
falling short of the desired effect.  MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO also had
simple animation, but that film is now sixteen years old and
standards have changed.

Ponyo (voiced by Noah Cyrus) is a goldfish living in the ocean.
But she has a driving curiosity about the humans who rule the land.
To see land people, and without the permission of her human-shaped
sea-magician father (Liam Neeson), she goes to take a look at what
life is like on land.  This gets her trapped in a small jar and a
human has to smash the jar to get her out, luckily unharmed.  The
human is the five-year-old Sosuke (Frankie Jonas).  It is love at
first sight between her and the boy.  Later the magical Ponyo takes
a form of a human.  The love of a boy for his fish/girl becomes
like the love he would have for another person.  The two have
different backgrounds but build a firm relationship on both liking
ham.  Trouble comes when Sosuke's mother Lisa is angry that
Sosuke's father is taking too many overtime shifts fishing for the
company he works for.  And she has good reason to worry.  Ponyo's
father is arranging a tsunami in punishment for this daughter's
disobedience.

I doubt that anybody at Disney, the company that released PONYO in
the United States, would tell someone of Miyazaki's stature that he
should have changed his storyline, but there is much in PONYO that
probably would have been unacceptable in an American-written
script.  Some touches just seem strange.  This is in large part a
romance between two five-year-olds, though they act a good deal
more mature.  At one point Sosuke just wanders away from his
school, which is probably against the rules and quite dangerous,
but either nobody notices or the results seem to be left as a loose
end.  Later Lisa is driving up a wet, twisty, and dangerous road
and takes her attention off the road to lick an ice cream cone.
Eventually she goes off in a disaster and leaves the two children
untended.  She seems like a terrible mother.  There are portions of
this film that make no sense.  Non-magical people under water seem
to have the power to breathe, talk, and walk.  (This may have been
intended to be inside a bubble, but that is never made clear.
There is a lot of unexplained magic going on.  Even if they were in
a bubble they do not seem to be very ruffled by their situation.)

Way too much of PONYO seems ill-considered and rushed.  I know this
film is getting really good critical response, but it really is a
pale shadow of the best films Miyazaki has made.  I rate PONYO a
disappointing low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 5/10.

Note: In a time-honored tradition of Disney films the assumption is
made that squid swim with their tentacles ahead of them.  It is
thought real squid are capable of some movement like that, but they
swim almost exclusively in the other direction with the tentacles
trailing.  Also goldfish do not spit and they live only in fresh
water.  Ponyo's magical origins might explain the inaccuracies, but
somebody should have noticed that Ponyo was like no other goldfish.
The Japanese version may have made Ponyo another kind of fish.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0876563>

What others are saying: <http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ponyo>

					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper at optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper