Arrietty

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Amberly, Jordan, Michael, Tyler

Ghibli Marathon!

So excited to finally see their latest. I opted to see this at the multiplex because I wanted to hear the english dub. I'm really curious not for the home release so I can compare the American dub too. It's fascinating to me that they did both but the story really does feel more British so I'm glad Australia got that dub.

Annoyingly the dub is only showing for one session very early in the morning. Which means the frozen coke machines haven't had time to warm up properly. And you get stuck in a cinema with a bunch of kids. But unlike the unruly screaming, running around and general carrying on that was so abundant in the agonising screening of The Muppets yesterday, these kids shut up and were completely memorised by the images before them. That is the magic of Ghibli. On a slightly more disturbing note I overheard one of the kids ask if the film was in 3D. The animation lover in me cringed a little at this but hey, that's the world we live in. I'm sure he enjoyed it just the same.

I remember a BBC adaptation of this story with Ian Holm that I used to watch after school when I was a kid. When the big American film version came out I was excited but horrified to see how much they bastardised it. This is much more like the quaint little story I loved. I really enjoyed it.

It's a little strange seeing all the bugs with cute cartoon eyes. They made bugs cute. I also noticed that they did much more depth of field than they normally do but it does help to sell the scale a little. And by doing the story in animation they can do things, I'm specifically thinking about the scale of the water and how it behaves, that they haven't managed in live action before.

First time director Hiromasa Yonebayashi does a fine job and this fits in nicely with the other Ghibli titles.