Movies / Movie Reviews

Ponyo - It's for Big Kids Too

By Hervé St-Louis
August 19, 2009 - 06:00

Ponyo is the story of a goldfish with a human face that befriends five-year-old Sosuke. After being his goldfish for a few hours, Ponyo decides that she wants to become a human and escape the magic ship of her father where she lives with her sisters. But abandoning the ocean for the surface threatens the balance of the world and only trials and love will allow the two kids to be together and save the world.



I know it makes me sound like a Miyazaki groupie but Ponyo has become one of my favourite films ever, whether animated or live action. The story was far simpler than other Studio Ghibli productions and was perfectly suited for children. There wasn’t even a villain or anyone bad or scary. Yet that did not stop Ponyo from being a great movie with great uplifting values about people being good to one another. It’s the type of movie jaded people that have lost faith in the goodness humanity should be subjected to.



I didn’t know much about what to expect from Ponyo and the theatre was filled with kids, parents and teenagers. The crowd seemed to have enjoyed the film tremendously. All the typical archetypes from past Miyazaki films were there too. Some people bemoan the fact that the young boy is a younger version of so many young men seen in past Miyazaki films. Ponyo herself is a clone of many other characters. Her mom is the strong mature woman, her father, the crafty toad of many other films.



Some viewers may find a film with no villain and no real challenges a bore to watch. Yet, there has to be an adult quality and the one in Ponyo is about what is unsaid. There are a lot of silent moments and great speeches that are hinted at but only seen briefly. How Ponyo’s world functions for example or the fact that her father claims to have once been a human are enough backstory to fill several subplots. However, these and much more are all briefly alluded to so the story can concentrate on the love between the two kids. That love is pure and simple and doesn’t need any explanation.



The artwork and visual have a similar impressionist feel. The backgrounds are not the finished semi realistic sets of past Miyazaki films. Instead they have a painterly and chalk quality to them that aligns them closely with the impressionist work of late 19th Century painters. The animation and the characters’ designs are optimized for movements and look great next to the painterly backdrops. Some of the animations, like the scenes with the fishes in the introduction shots early in the movie are animated on a step of 8 or less. That was to give the creatures a slow feel instead of using more frames to suggest incremental motion. It seems like all the animation budget was used to make the fish/splash waves more complex and engaging.



Maybe because the film was so simple and a feel good movie, I’m giving it a perfect score, although, like mentioned above, the animation was not uniformly smooth.

Rating: 10 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12