Ponyo (***1/4)

When celebrated Japanese animated filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle) teams up with the Disney people and makes a movie that’s (loosely) based on Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid,” one might start to wonder if he’s gone all mainstream. But no, Disney’s just the US distributor, and despite appealing to a younger audience than other Miyazaki films, and having English dubbing, this retains much of the appealing strangeness for which he’s known.

Ponyo is a fish who looks like a little white girl with a tail, but the boy who finds her is a Japanese boy living with his mother in a seaside town. Even with dubbing by American bigshots like Tina Fey (as the mother), Matt Damon, Lily Tomlin, and Liam Neeson, the movie retains a distinct Japanese flavor, as well as a style of animation, less realistic and nearly psychedelic at times, that is different from both Disney and Pixar, the big Hollywood animation studios. Even the way the boy’s mom drives recklessly is notable, as well as quite funny. (Even funnier is watching Ponyo sort of run on top of the giant wave that’s chasing the car. Honestly, the story of magic spells and the little fish-girl who wants to live on the land is borderng on the trite, not an adjective I’d associate with Miyazaki. (The other part of the story is about how the world might end if Ponyo doesn’t return to the sea like her dad wants.) But the kids will go for it, and there’s just enough quirky bits and humor that many adults will happily go along for the ride.

IMDB link

viewed 8/10/09 (screening at Ritz East) and reviewed 8/15/09

Lady in the Water (**)

M. Night Shaymalan’s eschews the trick endings of his other movies for a fable set in a Philadelphia apartment complex, but a convoluted story and some trite philosophizing make this easily the weakest of his post-Sixth Sense output.

I was rooting for this to be good. Not only is filmmaker M. Night Shaymalan a local Philadelphia guy, but he’s managed to continue to pursue a highly personal vision while still making Hollywood blockbusters. His latest recalls his genuine classic, The Sixth Sense, as well as E.T. I recall specifically that those were much better films. The movie starts off with a monologue about how a race of undersea people occasionally try to contact us, but we’ve forgotten how to listen. Everything else takes place in an apartment complex, where the building’s maintenance man (Paul Giamatti) discovers one of these creatures in the pool. Besides the typically strong sense of place, Giamatti’s performance as the building super with a sad past (named Cleveland) is the other reason to watch. The ethereally pale Bryce Dallas Howard has the right look for the part of the alien--sorry “narf,” as she’s called. She speaks in the time-honored way of otherworldly characters, which is to speak flatly, enunciate, use abstract words (like “beings” to describe humans), and absolutely avoid contractions.

It is all the better to suggest importance where there is none, and to convey the New Age-y spirituality Shaymalan intends. Really, though, it never does get very far beyond that opening voiceover. There are many layers to this fairy tale, but they form nothing. The narf, who is called Story, requires a “healer” and a “seeker” and a couple of other people to help her get back to her world. Trying to stop them are some nasty beasties called scrunts. If nothing else, these are at least better rendered than the aliens in the equally stupid, but less convoluted, Signs. I couldn’t keep this Story straight, but Cleveland is luckier. In a remarkably lame plot device, there’s a Korean family in the complex who simply explain everything to him. The other tenants are happily credulous; no one questions what the hell this Blue World is that Story comes from. The most important tenant is played by the director himself, as a writer who may someday change the world. He’ll have to come up with something better than Lady in the Water. Shaymalan reportedly left Disney Studios over its criticism of the script for this film. I hate to side with the megacorporation against the auteur, but….

IMDb link