Ponyo (8.5/10)

Alright, I'm going to make a public statement.

If you want legitimate, hardcore movie criticism, PLEASE view the site "rotten tomatoes" for them instead of relying on crap like this:

Anyway, my friend dragged me to one of the local theaters to watch this a couple of weeks back. I had seen the trailer a day prior to watching it on the big screen. While the animation isn't dramatically different from our true loves from earlier this decade, (Spirited Away), (Howl's Moving Castle), if you're gung ho' about repetition, the artistic style feels a bit lacking in comparison to its visually stunning predecessors. Felt as if Miyazaki decided to place more emphasis on the metaphor of 'simplicity' he may have wanted to build to create an illusion of innocence that you find in childhood.

I sat in the theater next to my friend, and a seat away from her younger cousin in a room filled with children around her age. This movie, while meant for that age group, still has this energy to it that makes you feel as though you're still on your couch back in the 90's watching a classic Disney flick with a sippie cup. A few minutes into the movie, you're going to feel as if a wave of nostalgia washes over you because of the film's tendency to stand up to cultural issues without trying too hard. One point being that Sasuke (try HARD not to think of Naruto) has a mother who's mostly between work and home alone raising her little boy on her own while her husband is out on duty at sea.

What's so engaging about Ponyo other than the animation are the sparkling transitions between reality and fantasy. You can be looking at a regular scene, and then suddenly you see a perspective from close to the sea of fish suddenly rising and magically transforming into waves. I admired this film's ability to lock you in its imagination where everything terrible can happen, yet all of the characters and atmosphere welcome it with a cheerful smile. When you watch this movie, if at all..please make sure that you leave all biases and logic abandoned on the floor. This movie is meant to give children a new world that gives a more eccentric and playful twist on the Little Mermaid, and to give older audiences a break from the searing realism and big bang michael bay theories in normal main stream flicks.

From yours truly,
I reward Miyazaki's "Ponyo" with an 8.5/10.
It has a higher rating because of its beautiful amount of creativity, good voice acting, and allows you to be drawn into the movie's colorful twists to normal life. It didn't receive a perfect score because unlike its predecessors, once again..It lacked the heart grabbing, mind shocking 'awe worthy' qualities that would have left its fantastical world existing in my brain long after the movie was turned off.


xoxo
~Auto