When I reviewed "Howl's Moving Castle," long, long time ago, I stated my hopes for Miyazaki to push the boundaries a little more and offer a movie that's a little different than his recent fare. Then he went and made Ponyo. Ponyo is basically a story of a young fish-girl who falls in love with a boy and using her father's wizard elixirs to become a human girl, only to upset the natural balance of the world.
Okay, so "basically" isn't going to really cover it here. But the audience is thrown head first into the world of Ponyo, and what an imaginative world it is. As usual, the movie is covered with detail, all hand-animated in that familiar Miyazaki fashion. There are a few moments where the animation strays away from this, to become a simplistic child-like rendering, mostly for Ponyo herself.
While the animation is as solid as always, the story is a little weak. It opens strong, but Miyazaki seemed to have written himself into a corner by the second half of the film. The ending comes off anti-climatic, with little reason as to how the world is righted besides Ponyo's mother, the Deux Ex Machina, that happens to just fix everything. It may not help that Disney's English translation suffers from over-explanations and big-budget cast that probably wasn't needed.
But the real soul of the movie was the music of Joe Hisaishi. No words can describe the sheer majesty and deft Hisaishi brought to this film. It is the emotional foundation that brings the movie alive.
Is this the next Princess Mononoke? No. Does it affirm the wonder and innocence of children in a society that no longer emphasizes that? Yes. Yes, it does. B+
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