Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

Director: Hiyao Miyazaki

SYNOPSIS

A young girl is cursed into being an old woman by an evil witch after she gets involved with a young wizard named Howl. Stowing away in his castle, which has both magic doors and legs that allow it to move around, she joins a young boy, a fire demon and a scarecrow in trying to lift her curse and to discover the Howl's secret pain.

REVIEW

As a big fan of much of Miyazaki's previous work – especially Spirited Away and My neighbour Totoro, I was surprised to find this movie (an adaptation of a novel by British author Diana Wynne Jones) rather disappointing. I'm not sure whether this is due to over-familiarity with Miyazaki's typical tropes or something that simply got lost in translation from the source material, with which I am unfamiliar.

That said, it's still head and shoulders above most Hollywood-produced childrens' animation. The typical Studio Ghibli look is there – crisp, fluid hand drawn animation, excellent character design (I especially liked to mute, facially inexpressive scarecrow for some reason), a world that has a mixture of 19th century fashion and architecture combined with steam-driven technology and magic, environmental and pacifist messages, weird blob-like creatures and so on. The story is strange and lets you pick it up as you go along – no hand holding here, and it's charming all the time while it's being told even if there's no clear signposts as to where it's going.

However, I didn't feel that some of the magic was there this time around. My favourite Miyazaki movies are set apart by their true sense of childlike wonder and innocence. Perhaps because the protagonist is older this time (even before the curse), and the one small child in the movie is more familiar with the world than we or the protagonist are, this doesn't come through at all and makes the movie seem less fable-like and more, well, just strange. It's a shame, because it's definitely worth watching but lacks that spark that made previous movies more compelling.

Don't get me wrong, though, it's still very much worth checking out, especially if you're not as familiar with Miyazaki's back catalogue as I am.

8 / 10