I had a bit of time on my hands over the weeked, so I finally got round to watching that cam of Ponyo on the Cliff
The movie itself was okay. Very childish, but I’m obviously not the intended audience. My adult brain wouldn’t stop screaming at me that while it was very pretty to see a whale swimming across a road, a tsunami huge enough to turn a cliff into an island would be extremely disastrous and would result in an extremely large amount of extremely dead people. Not to mention all the stranded, dead and rotten fish in people’s houses once the waters finally receded. And just think about all the destroyed goods and boats and personal effects and books and money and clothes. They’d better have been insured or they’re in for a world of financial hurt.
Still, even if I was the intended audience, I don’t think this is one movie I would watch more than once. Growing up, the favorite movies in my house were those with lots of tension and nail-biting moments in them. Disney’s Aladdin was one of those. And Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which we watched until the tape tore, then patched together with sellotape and kept on watching. Ponyo on the Cliff has very lovely animation and stirring music (Wagner called, he wants his royalties), but there’s never any doubt that everything was going to come right in the end. You can tell by the way the characters take the time to chow down on ramen and ham then snuggle down on the couch while the world goes to hell around them.
Did it help my Japanese ability any? Not really. The script was written for 5-year-old kids = very easy to understand. And the art and actions are expressive enough that they needed even have bothered with any dialogue at all. It was fun though, definitely worth at least one watch. Next on my to-watch list is Laputa: Castle in the Sky. And that’s all for today.
