Review by Steve Sparshott
Stars the voices of Cate Blanchett, Noah Lindsey Cyrus, Frankie Jonas, Matt Damon,
Tina Fey, Cloris Leachman, Liam Neeson, Lily Tomlin, Betty White | Written by Hayao Miyazaki
UK certification U | UK RRP £22.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 103 minutes | Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Ponyo is bonkers. Director Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli deal in fantasy, but while Spirited Away’s dragons and witches and Kiki flying around on her broomstick are relatively easy to process, Ponyo is something else. Remember when the bus turned up in My Neighbour Totoro, and it was a cat? With 12 legs? That ran along telephone wires and was invisible to adults? Ponyo operates at a similar level of gleeful illogic right from the start.
While a child demanding explanations (“but WHY?”) is irritating, an adult doing the same Is simply unacceptable, so just go along with it. When five-year-old protagonist Sosuke (Jonas), finding a goldfish stuck in a jar bobbing about in the shallows, escapes an assault by some sentient seawater, he shrugs it off, observing: “That was weird.” Viewers would be well advised to take the same approach. Ponyo (Cyrus) herself is a goldfish who wants to be human. She’s the eldest of hundreds of sisters whose parents are aquatic goddess Gran Mamare (Blanchett) and the nearest thing the story has to a villain, a former human called Fujimoto (Neeson) who’s now the guardian of the sea, despairing at the filthy humans’ exploitation and pollution of his home. He lives in a large mushroom where he brews a mysterious elixir and commands water to become mean-eyed spirits who do his dirty work. Gran Mamare changes size (as do her clothes; this isn’t Watchmen) and glows a lot. Ponyo (whose real name is Hildegarde) finds she can will herself to become human and escapes to the surface via jellyfish. Don’t ask questions.
Sosuke’s mother Lisa (Fey) is a surprisingly realistic character, a competent-but-exhausted almost-single mum (Dad’s out at sea) who remains completely oblivious to all the insanity. Chased along the coast road by sea spirits/giant fish/waves, she simply drives her pink Suzuki Swift even more recklessly, and the arrival of a ham-obsessed waterproof five-year-old girl/fish who’s never had a hot drink doesn’t faze her one bit. Some more things not to question: Water itself takes many forms: bubbles (of air OR water), wriggling golden droplets, Fujimoto’s aggressive servants; Ponyo shares some physics textbooks with The Abyss. The fish’s desire to become human literally upsets nature’s balance, causing the moon to move closer to the Earth, forming a huge static wall of water (yep, like the unused ending to The Abyss) and submerging the coastal town where Sosuke and Lisa live. Ponyo’s tiny orange sisters become gigantic blue fish whose cavorting produces storms and floods. She can work magic, changing the scale of an oil-burning candle-powered toy boat so she and Sosuke can navigate the newly-flooded town. Unless she’s tired, when she begins to revert to her goldfish state, passing through a sort of chicken-axolotl phase. Prehistoric fish and trilobites roam…without reading too much into it, there’s a nice ambiguity to the story. Whether the fish cause the storms, or vice versa, or Ponyo’s behaviour affects the moon’s orbit, or vice versa, it’s all part of the whole – an almost Gaian outlook. So, yes, Ponyo does have an environmental message – more than one in fact – but it’s just a bit of background for all the joyful lunacy up front.
The visual background is also muted. It’s rendered in a simpler style than previous Ghibli/Miyazaki outings, with a handcrafted coloured-pencil look, while in the foreground the characters are given a rather flat palette. They’re as expressive and lively as always, though, and the animation is as vigorous and smooth as we’ve come to expect from Studio Ghibli. Not only is the visual texture restrained, but the setting is less glamorous too; gone are the 1920s Mediterranean details of Kiki’s Delivery Service and the glowing richness of Spirited Away. Instead we have a working coastal town, incredibly similar to the Falmouth/St. Mawes area of Cornwall. So, a restrained backdrop with a completely crazy foreground. Why not?
At first glance, Ponyo looks crude and confused. But the relentless assault of mad images and events – the kind that young children (the target audience) accept without question – should win over all but the most soulless adults too. The film isn’t as strong visually as other Ghibli productions, but makes up for it with sheer verve. Just don’t ask questions.
EXTRAS ★★★★ Wow, there's an abundance of bonus material, starting with the storyboards, music video for the theme song, and japanese trailers and TV spots. There there's a bunch of interviews, with John Lasseter, Hayao Miyazaki, Toshio Suzuki and the japanese voice cast. Then there are the feaurettes - Behind the Microphone: The Voices of Ponyo; Meet Ponyo; Creating Ponyo; Ponyo and Fujimoto; The Nursery; Scoring Miyazaki; The Producer's Perspective: Telling the Sotyr; The Locations in Ponyo; and The Five Geniuses Who Created Ponyo.