Legendary Japanese animation writer-director Hayao Miyazaki is great at taking viewers through his very wildly imaginative worlds, "Ponyo" is no exception to that. "Ponyo" tells the story of a magical gold fish that is saved by a young boy named Sosuke and then wants to become a human. Her evil or highly over protective father (how ever you choose to view it) Fujimoto voiced by Liam Neeson attempts in various ways to prevent this from happening. Ponyo's mother voiced by Cate Blanchett feels differently and thus wants to give Sosuke a chance to prove he really loves Ponyo which in turn would allow her to become a human.
Lovely and exceedingly cute throughout however I can't bring myself to love "Ponyo" as I did "Spirited Away" and a few other Miyazaki works (I'm a sucker for "Kiki's Delivery Service" actually). The voice acting is great, I loved Tiny Fey voiced Sosuke's rather tough mother Lisa who works for an old folks home and has driving skills in extremely bad weather that rival anyone on Earth. And many of the other supporting work done here is terrific as well. Visually the film feels different yet familiar which is something I always like, but overall the whole picture left me a bit empty.
Perhaps it's just the simplicity of it being about love or the particular way they chose to look at it. In any case it's not a real flaw of flaws, it's a great way to teach children about love and show them a very different type of animated film then they've been seeing in theaters in recent years. If I were a parent I'd drive out of my way to show my kid something this nice and creative. At the same time older kids may feel the same way I did. I'd find it hard press not to like it at all, for that you'd have to lack soul or something. But all it's sweetness can't make it great.
"Ponyo" *** out of ****
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