I Saw a Movie: Ponyo (2009)

Detail from one of the "wallpaper cat" paintings by Louis Wain, c. 1935

Pixar VP John Lasseter has been trying for over a decade to get Americans to watch the films of Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki. And it's been an uphill battle - three Miyazaki films have received theatrical releases in the US since 1997, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle, and none of them have been box-office blockbusters (even though two of them were Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature). All three of these features were large-scale fantasy epics, so it was interesting to see if Miyazaki's new film, Ponyo, would be any different. Ponyo is a more playful, intimate story for kids, along the lines of earlier Miyazaki movies like My Neighbor Totoro. Unsurprisingly, Ponyo has been under-promoted, and it only made $3.5 million in its opening weekend (less than the farting guinea pigs of G-Force but, happily, more than my least favorite movie of 2009).

Ponyo may not be the kind of movie that kids in this country like anymore, but I think I can safely say that it is what they should like. It's the story of two five-year-olds who are in love. Sosuke lives on the coast of Japan, on a cliff overlooking the sea - his father is a sailor of some kind and his mother works at the local senior center. Ponyo is a goldfish with a human head who lives beneath the sea - her father is an alchemist/hermit who hates humanity and her mother is - no, not a fish (ew!) - she's actually a major plot point that shouldn't be ruined. Ponyo, wanting to be "part of our world", swims to the ocean's surface and meets Sosuke when he catches her and puts her in a bucket. They form a quick bond and, although Ponyo's father acts swiftly to return her to the sea, she decides that she will use her family's magic to become a human so that she can be with Sosuke.

The magical element of this movie is like the magic of most Miyazaki movies - it's very Japanese. That means that it can be a little insrutible and even counter-intuitive, and Miyazaki's films never do a lot of explaining. You just have to go along with it and wait for the inevitable one-sentence explanation that some character will blurt out in the last third of the movie. If you can stop your brain from asking a lot of questions and just go with it, Ponyo can be a visually-arresting and original trip involving tsunamis, hordes of prehistoric fish, tides gone wild, and shape-shifting goldfish with human faces. The movie's pacing will seem very deliberate to American kids, and they might have a hard time getting into the movie's mundane first half-hour, but things pick up pretty quick after that. And the movie's different sense of timing results in some very rewarding moments, like Ponyo's face-off with a sullen baby, which is delivered in a series of hilariously long takes.

The voice acting was a concern for me - there is no legitimate reason for casting a Jonas and a Cyrus in this - but it is pretty good overall. "Good" here means functional and non-intrusive, with the exception of the very distinctive Liam Neeson and Betty White. The animation is a thing of beauty, with the fluidity and hand-drawn look that people love in Miyazaki's work. The translated script by Melissa Mathison is quite smooth and funny, thanks in part to the supervision of John Lasseter - his love of this material is quite clear. He may never find the huge audience for Miyazaki's movies in the US that they deserve, but Ponyo and Up (Lasseter's other big project of 2009) are probably the best kids movies being released this year.

"Oceans in the Hall" by the Ladybug Transistor