Hayao Miyazaki's "Ponyo" isn't in the same league as the legendary Japanese animator's previous masterpieces, such as "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbor Totoro." But even minor Miyazaki towers over most feature-length cartoons aimed squarely at children (and children at heart).
A loose reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid," "Ponyo" begins deep beneath the sea where a wizard (voiced by Liam Neeson) with a rock-star mane and androgynous features monitors the delicate balance among nature's various factions.
That balance is thrown off when his daughter, a goldfish with a human face, sneaks away and becomes trapped inside a glass jar on the ocean floor.
The fish (voiced by Noah Cyrus, Miley's little sister) is rescued by 5-year-old Sosuke (Frankie Jonas, younger sibling of the three famous Jonases), who plops the fish into a bucket of water, names it Ponyo and keeps it as a pet. But after the wizard finds Ponyo and returns her to her underwater home, she decides she liked living above the sea better, so she magically sprouts arms and legs and returns to Sosuke, this time in the form of a little girl.
The story sounds weird, and it is. Like many Miyazaki films, "Ponyo" is written from a child's perspective and with a child's sense of logic. There's no point in trying to figure out, say, what exactly the wizard is doing on the ocean floor or how a fish could will itself into human form after licking a drop of blood off Sosuke's thumb. Miyazaki's films take the unexplainable for granted, suggesting there's much more to the world than we humans realize, and to think otherwise is to miss out on the magic that exists around us.
Miyazaki shuns computer-generated imagery in favor of old-school, two-dimensional pen-and-ink cartoons. But his infinitely imaginative, lovingly rendered visions tickle the imagination in a way CGI cartoons can't. "Ponyo" is stuffed with the sort of indelible, fantastical images for which Miyazaki is revered: Ponyo running atop churning waves that look like giant fish; a city flooded by a micro typhoon as prehistoric creatures swim through its streets; barges and oil rigs piled high after the ocean level rises, and the moon begins to pull closer to Earth.
Disney is doing its best to make U.S. audiences take note of "Ponyo," which has grossed $183 million worldwide. The studio has rounded up an impressive voice cast to translate the film into English, including Tina Fey and Matt Damon as Sosuke's parents and Cate Blanchett as a goddess of the sea.
The pat ending is a bit of a letdown: The story doesn't reach a climax; it just stops. But that doesn't take away from the hypnotic spell that the rest of the movie weaves. If you've never experienced a Miyazaki movie, here's your chance to try one. Come on in. The water's fine.
