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 powerful sorcerer, forces her to return to her home in the sea. But Ponyo s desire to be human upsets the delicate balance of nature and triggers a gigantic storm. Only Ponyo s mother, a beautiful sea goddess, can restore nature s balance and make Ponyo… More >>
Ponyo
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
We’ve been patiently waiting for Disney to release the movie on DVD and finally we got it. The movie seems interesting, except neither I or my kids could hear the dialogue. At all. The music is exremely loud and the dialogue is very, very quiet somewhere on the background. We spend the whole 103 min playing with the volume of the remote, trying to hear what the actors were saying. It might be a nice story or might not, we just don’t know. Shame on Disney for ruining the experience. I looked through the other reviews and it seems that most of them are based on the theatrical release and not the DVD. 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