Ponyo
Saturday, March 13th, 2010 at
11:29 am
Product Description
Welcome to a world where anything is possible! Academy Award® winning director Hayao Miyazaki (2002, Best Animated Feature, Spirited Away) and legendary filmmaker John Lasseter together with Disney bring to life a heartwarming and imaginative telling of Hans Christian Andersen s classic fairy tale The Little Mermaid. A young boy named Sosuke rescues a goldfish named Ponyo, and they embark on a fantastic journey of friendship and discovery before Ponyo s father, a p… More >>
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“Ponyo” tells the story of a five year old kid named Sosuke who adopts a fish named Ponyo. The goldfish happened to have been a princess living undersea by a leader who tries to take care of goldfish. The goldfish, Ponyo, had so many powers to become a princess that one night when Sosuke was with his mother, Lisa, was coming home in a fierce thunderstorm that eventually Ponyo found them and they need to recover.
I have seen a few of Miyazaki’s films that I have enjoyed such as “Castle in the Sky.” It’s hard to say nowadays that I keep track of anime though most of my friends are obsessed with anime. Many of my friends are obsessed about different types of animation but for me, it’s just the Pixar films that I have been obsessed about. But given the fact that John Lasseter is friends with Hayao Miyazaki and is now taking over the Walt Disney Corporations, I thought that I should give “Ponyo” a go when my friend who is about my age and we’ve just graduated high school that summer wanted to go with me.
Oh boy! Was this a good movie or not?
It was one thing if I took my children to see this movie, depending if they are like three years old but going with a kid who just graduated high school like me is totally out of the question. To say that I really hated “Ponyo” is definitely a matter of my opinion. I mean, Miyazaki has a very wild imagination when it comes to Walt Disney Studios and Japanese animation, aka anime. But making a movie about a talking fish was really not what I expected.
I forced to see this film when it was in theaters over the summer and that summer hardly had any great movies. I mean a few of the great ones were “Star Trek,” “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” “Up,” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” There were a few so-so ones but watching “Ponyo” was not like watching those four movies. It was easily the worst summer movie yet along with “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” “Terminator Salvation” and “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.” I mean due to the fact that we’re in a bad economy, is the movie industry really running out of great ideas by making all this crap? And I’d feel just as sorry if I had to just blame Miyazaki for good just by making this idea.
And yet Disney is really running out of ideas for movies.
In fact, this movie was so boring and tedious, I just really wanted to leave. I hated the fish Ponyo himself and I really thought that boy was so annoying that I just wanted to kill him. I mean if I were to deal with a kid like him, I would use earmuffs and not hear a word he says. I mean I have two younger friends who annoy the hell outta me, and I don’t really care whether or not it’s just their bad habits. But at least they don’t act like Sunhai (or whatever his name is) in this film.
Oh well. Time to move on. I actually caught a matinee showing for this movie. Even for a good deal, that’s still a s***ty movie. How much would I pay to see this movie? Zero.
Rating: 1 / 5
This movie was just plain weird. Freaky and a bit scary for kids (I have both a 5 and 6 yo). Very cheap animation, nothing like any animated movie nowadays, very old-school looking. I can get over that, no big deal. But the fact that the human mother in the movie got mad at her husband and called him a jerk, slammed down the phone and chugged a beer, is not my idea of what to portray to a 5 year old. The fish/man/freak father in the movie was a bit scary, following them around and making waters flood the lands, etc. Kids don’t understand that kind of thing. Oh, and the 5 year old fish and human boy in the movie have to decide if they are true loves. Really?? Yes, lets leave that decision to a five year old-quite normal. These writers ought to be slapped.
Rating: 2 / 5
This is the first film in quite a few years that I have so thoroughly disliked. Many admirers claim “it’s hand-drawn, not the cold, heartless work of computers!” or “the symbolism is so important and you obviously don’t get it,” or “Miyazaki’s a master!” or “you need to attend to what’s not being said as much as what IS being said.” I still say any film that has a father-figure dressed like a bad drag combo of Ann-Margaret and Cher, any film that has a mother ignore warnings and outrace a flood in her crappy car and then LEAVE her very young child alone (with a strange fish!) in said flood in order to check on a bunch of old folks who are in an institution miles away with other guardians, any film that allows 5-year-olds to determine their destinies in love, and any film that so clearly wimps out at its climax is hooey. Enjoy the magic! Revel in childhood innocence! Accept the unacceptable! Yep, heard and read it all before. Ponyo’s annoying and endless repetition of “Sosuke” and “ham” is grating (not cute), and the ecological message is heavy-handed. Miyazaki is more interested in emotions than conflict; yet, without conflict, emotional impact is lost. Again, I’m supposed to believe that this boy and fish are drawn (pun intended) together? Are fated soul-mates? Kids, get back to me in 20 years and let’s see how you’re doing. Yes, I hear the collective intake of great indignation, but for me, this was an exercise in tedium and sappiness.
Rating: 1 / 5
Ponyo has about the most beautiful animation I have ever seen in a movie. It is simply stunning. It seems to live in a world somewhere between Anime and Japanese woodcuts. The large stunning blocks of vibrant colour almost live in themselves and most of the actual things which are chosen to be animated are stunning to – however this does little to hide what seems to be a stilted story which I feel sure has lost something in the translation both of language and culture from Japanese to English.
This is the retold tale, Japanese style, of the little mermaid. Brunhilde is the daughter of a mad scientist and the sea/earth mother. She is a fish like creature who lives in her father’s ship in a bubble under the sea. But she wants more, and in the opening scenes escapes inside a jellyfish, the most beautiful scene to open a movie with.
She ends up being saved from certain death by a little boy, Sosuke, who takes her to school but loses her back to the sea in a rather child-frightening scene where the scientist summons up some fierce and sinister looking waves.
Ponyo (or Brunhilda to her father) returns to Sosuke determined to be a girl. She drinks her father’s elixirs and unbalances the world in the process. The tsunami scenes are both fearfully frightening again for some young children, and hilarious – Ponyo – now a little girl runs along the top of the waves.
It all is resolved and the earth mother talks to Sosuke’s mother and Sosuke says he will love Ponyo forever and all is well with the world again.
The story just didn’t seem to flow. The mother and earth mother talking for long hours. The Old lady who refused to go under water and is taken down anyway, Sosuke and Ponyo’s long, seemingly pointless trip in the boat. The very strange prehistoric fish which swim, seemingly threateningly, under their boat. And why does Sosuke say “pre-cambrian”. I know what Pre-Cambrian is, but is there a point that they are there? Is there a point that he knows? why aren’t there just fish there? Is this because the balance of the world is out? But then why does Sosuke, a 5 year old know?
Sorry, but for me the movie was full of these sort of questions. What was this or that all about? Some is explained but very often I think there is something really important been missed out somehow.
Anyway. It was an all right movie to watch. My 7 year old quite liked it, the 6 year old found it very frightening, and I found it frustrating and full of unexplained things.
Rating: 3 / 5
I love all of Hayao Miyazaki’s movies and I loved Ponyo. This was the first movie in a theater that my squirmy 3 yr daughter ever saw and she was simply entranced and actually sat through the whole thing. I recommend this wondrous charming movie to any age group and any person. It is artful and marvelous.
Now given all that is this particular DVD version the English dubbed one that was seen in American theaters? It is very confusing. The Amazon page gives the American Actors as the principle players in the animated movie and then says it is Japanese with English Subtitles. I am very hesitant to buy this version for my kids since it does not appear to know what it actually is.
Rating: 5 / 5