p r e f e r r e d r e v i e w e r s :
 |
 |
|
You haven't selected any preferred reviewers. To learn more about customizing your experience, click here.
|
|
|
 |
 |
o t h e r r e v i e w e r s :
|
|
|
DokBrowne [ 9.0 ]
[ add to preferred ]
[ email this review to a friend ]
Not breaking any new ground for the Miyazaki brand, but another dependably sensory-nourishing hot bath of humane, pleasurable, gorgeously designed understatement from Studio Ghibli. If I were to force myself to be more objective here, I could complain both that yet another adaptation of "The Borrowers" is excruciating at this point, and that Ghibli is repeating itself too often - Disney gets criticized over and over for making their particular formula of fairy tale adventures, after all - as "Arrietty" could easily be broken down into an exact recipe of Ghibli-isms, but it's one of those gloriously idiosyncratic cinematic algorithms, like Wes Anderson films or Pixar, that warrants repetition, so enduringly sublime are its results. And they find enough new nuance to the ancient "little people living underneath us" tale, accentuating their perspective and utilization of our enormity in many little creative ways, to forgive the cliched choice of material here.
Also it's just great to have a counter-balance in the animation field - in any given year, we have room for a Studio Ghibli classic alongside the manic "screwball" comedy of Dreamworks, the prestigious populist grandeur of Pixar, the old-fashioned escapism of the Disney line, the distinctly British wackiness of Aardman, the soft-spoken enchantment of Sylvain Chomet, the off-beat curios of Focus Features, the big directors who give animation a try (Spielberg, Wes Anderson, Gore Verbinski, Richard Linklater, George Miller, Zack Snyder, Peter Jackson), the boundary-pushing literary adaptations of Robert Zemeckis, even the bright and shiny 2nd-tier knock-offs of Illumination Entertainment and Blue Sky Studios. Needless to say, it's a great era to be an animation fan
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
jeff_v [ 7.5 ]
[ add to preferred ]
[ email this review to a friend ]
Maybe not as fantastic as Miyazaki's films, but with such careful attention to detail and ambience, and an uncommon philosophical bent (for a kids film, anyway) that it's quietly remarkable.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Weighted Rating | : 7.1 |
| No. Ratings | : 2 | |
| No. Reviews | : 2 | |
|
|
|
|