Ponyo

Deep under the sea, a small goldfish wanders away from her Sea Wizard father and heads to the shoreline. There she gets caught in a bottle, only to be rescued by a little boy (who names her Ponyo). She immediately falls for the child, and begins work to turn into a human so she can be with him. Problem is, this greatly upsets nature, so it's going to take some work to get everything to work out for the better (and not have the entire planet flooded with water).

Amidst all the stressful things in life, sometimes the best thing to do is to relax with a cartoon. A carefree, innocent, feel-good animated movie to lift the spirits. And this movie is the perfect example for such a film.

The plot is simple enough to follow. Fish meets boy, fish falls for boy, fish turns into girl, girl and boy fall in love. Even with them being two 5-year-old kids, it works. There's a hodgepodge of supporting characters as well, but it's mostly about these two kids, and they are done well. They seem like real kids (albeit occasionally smarter than kids twice their age), and that realism contrasts nicely with the fantasy of the film.

And it is indeed a fantasy-filled movie. Lots of weird stuff goes down, from the Sea Wizard father of Ponyo fiddling with all his magical elixirs under the sea to the world being flooded and ancient fish coming back to life. The movie doesn't play any of them up in a scary way (though there's a big storm in the middle that freaked me out a bit. Though violent weather does that to me), and the characters in the film take it all in stride. When magical things happen, they look on the bright side of it all, and accept it for what it is.

Visually speaking, this is an absolutely stunning movie. Gorgeous schools of individually-details fish and other undersea life will blow you away. It's a testament to hand-drawn animation; no matter how big and good CGI gets, the hand animated stuff can, will, and should always be around to impress. It's got soul to see drawings like that up on the screen, and you'll probably need to see the movie twice just because you may miss some of the nifty background details.

This being a Japanese movie, it is dubbed, and while I haven't had a chance to see the subbed version yet you can rest assured the dubbed one is quite good. It doesn't appear anything has been lost in translation, and the cast is quite appropriate for the characters. The kids are loud (especially Ponyo) and explorative, the seniors at the rest home are kindly and gently, and the Sea Wizard is Liam Neeson (and really, what's not to love when he's involved?). Plus, it helps draw you in the movie even more when you can better concentrate on the luscious background art.

I'm behind on many movies I still need to see, and this includes the work by Hayao Miyazaki. So far all I've seen from him are this and My Neighbor Totoro. From what I've heard, this is the most kid-friendly movie he's made yet. But while it doesn't carry the deep themes apparently present in Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, it's an entirely enjoyable movie for people of all ages (admittedly children mostly, but open-minded adults should be able to dig it as well. I know I did).

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BfNtYF94cQ