The kids and I drove for an hour to see the new Miyazaki film, Ponyo. (It didn’t come to my local theater in backwoods, usa.) We are huge fans of Miyazaki films, each with our own fav:

4yo loves Totoro for its lovable furry title characters, the soot spirits and the Nekobasu (the cat-bus.)

7yo loves Princess Mononoke, arguably the most gruesome of Miyazaki’s films, but perhaps the most realistic.

9yo loves Spirited Away, loves No Face and even Yubaba, but especially spider-legged Kumaji and her other allies.

My husband likes Nausicaa best. Not sure why — the insect thing?

And, of course, I love Howl’s Moving Castle. I love Diana Wynne Jones’ book (and its sequels) so that’s part of it, but Miyazaki put his own stamp on an already lovely story. It’s a love story with spark (did they use that as the tag line? They should have!!). Oh, don’t you love Calcifer? In fact, I would say the Door-Mat in MindsBase was somewhat inspired by Calcifer.

Now, I feel rather amiss not even mentioning Castle in the Sky, or even The Cat Returns or Kiki’s Delivery Service, all of which we also own and love.

So, back to Ponyo. I knew, going in, that this would be a younger story, more on the order of Totoro than Mononoke. But I really got my hopes up when the hip 20-something boy at the ticket counter offered “It’s really great!” when I bought the tix.

Here’s what was great about it:

• Watercolor artistry, oy yes.
• Spectacular visuals, especially the oceanic events. Depicting the waves as giant fish — brilliant!
• The magically-enlarged toy boat powered by a candle-fired boiler. My kids want to try to build one of those now.
• The old ladies. One thing I love about Miyazaki films (and Japanese culture in general) is the integration of older people as valued members of society.
• The smaller story of Ponyo and Sosuke is backdropped by the larger world of the mother, the father and the town dealing with the storms — LOVE IT!
• The wonderful details such as the ham radio, the generator and the Morse Code spotlight. My kids eat up this kind of stuff.
• The Sea King Fujimoto. Does he remind you a little of Howl? Great voice choice in Liam Neeson.

Here’s where it fell down for me. I never felt enough attachment to Ponyo or Sosuke. I never felt that Sosuke loved Ponyo the way a boy eventually needs to love a girl. He seemed to love her as a pet, but she didn’t end up as a pet, she ended up as a human girl. I needed to see them have some version of love as boy and girl — a girl who acted a little more like a girl than an alien experiencing the earth for the first time.

I felt like that was the promise, and not just because it’s the route Disney took on the Hans Christian Anderson classic. The opening scenes with Sosuke (at least the English version) spoke much of love — the love Sosuke immediately had for Ponyo and the love (shown by hurt when he didn’t return) Sosuke’s mother had for his father (and vice versa).

As the movie progressed and became more about Ponyo’s transformation (literally and emotionally) what I saw was Ponyo experiencing LIFE. I didn’t see her experiencing LOVE. So, in the end, I was left a little empty with where Ponyo’s story would go from there. Would Sosuke grow tired of Ponyo over the years, or see her as a sister (since all signs pointed to her being raised in his household). Would Ponyo really like being a human better if she wasn’t loved by Sosuke? Would she miss her many sisters and long to return to the sea?

Fortunately, my kids weren’t troubled by these same lingering questions. But they also haven’t begged for us to buy it when it comes out on DVD, which is often the first question after a great in-theater experience.

SO… compared to other Miyazaki films, it was okay. Compared to films like Open Season, it was “really great” — just as the ticket-boy promised.

= 3 nods

Now, go put all the Miyazaki films in your netflix queue!! Most are FIVE NODS!

(P.S. Is queue not the weirdest-spelled word?)