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Review by Gwynn Grandy
Howl's Moving Castle by Miyazaki, the famous
Studio Ghibli Director, is the
fairy-tale story of a girl who offends a witch and
is enchanted to look old, and sets out to break
the enchantment. She ends up at the Magician
Howl's moving castle, meeting a captive fire
"demon", the whimsical Howl, a hopping scarecrow,
and several other interesting characters along the
way. This is, at heart, a romance story that
transcends age and looks, with winning characters,
including a strong female heroine, who doesn't
whine or complain.
A few scenes might be a little scary for very
young children (the magical
bombs and the aerial fight scenes that are
remarkably reminiscent of WWII), but it isn't any
worse than Bambi's mother. Miyazaki plays with how
old our heroine looks, and she is inconsistently
played as very young, very old, or middle aged,
with no clear logic to when which age is shown,
which some viewers may find distracting. My main
complaint is that the resolution doesn't quite
meet adult logic, but it's close enough.
Like most Miyazaki films, this is ultimately a
children's movie, missing
the more adult humor of recent children's movies
such as Shrek, but retaining old school charm. The
beautiful animation sweeps you into a wonderful
world of fantasy, with enough depth of plot to
keep adults interested. If you liked any of his
previous movies (such as Spirited Away, My
Neighbor Totoro, or Princess Mononoke) I highly
recommend this film. If you haven't seen any of
his works, I might recommend starting with my
Neighbor Totoro or Spirited Away instead, which I
regard as his best two works to date.
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