Welcome to the Wonderful World of Ponyo
by moonfever0Disney has just re-released Hayao Miyazaki's 2008 Japanese hit Gake no ue no Ponyo, or Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. They went all out, employing an all-star cast including Cate Blanchett, Noah Cyrus, Matt Damon, Frankie Jonas, Tina Fey, Cloris Leachman, Liam Neeson, Lily Tomlin and Betty White. My five-year-old daughter has been begging us to see the movie, so we finally ventured out to see it last night.
Disney's Ponyo opened to wide release in 927 theatres across America on August 14th. "Wide release" apparently doesn't include our local theaters, so we had to travel a bit to view it. Our kids, ages eight and five, were first introduced to Hayao Miyazaki through his film Spirited Away. We had only heard of this anime filmmaker through a friend who is well versed in anime. Spirited Away was filled with mystical forces, stunning animation, and compelling story-telling.
Ponyo is a modern day telling of "The Little Mermaid" set in a Japanese fishing village. Ponyo is a goldfish that longs to be human to be a precocious and charming five-year-old boy. There's magic, tsunamis, transformation and salvation.
Having been saturated with computer generated animated films from Pixar and DreamWorks for the last ten years, viewing a traditionally animated film was almost quaint. The visuals were rich in details and color and the characters were immediately endearing. As a foreign film purist, I kept being distracted by the ways Disney Americanized it. There were some signs that were left in Japanese, and then some signs that were in English (potato chips, for one). Most of the character names were Japanese, but the mother's name was Lisa. I suppose that Americanizing the movie makes it more accessible to the American audience, but I would definitely want to see it in the original Japanese with subtitles. According to IMDB, the mother's name was Risa in Japanese, so I guess it wasn't too far from the original.
My family was split on their feelings for the movie. My husband doesn't like the anime style of animation with the large eyes and felt that the movie was a bit weird. Ponyo was the strangest looking goldfish he'd ever seen. My eight-year-old son didn't know what to make of it and couldn't give me an opinion other that "I don't know". I think the visuals were overwhelming and the cultural differences felt strange to him, although we came home to "magical" ramen noodles. My daughter's first reaction was, "The movie was horrible! Because I dropped my food!" Indeed, she dropped not one, but two bags of pretzels and chips all over the floor and proceeded to melt down during the movie. But when I tucked her in to bed and asked her again, she said that she really liked the movie. Her favorite character was Ponyo, of course.
I felt the movie was beautiful and enchanting. My favorite character was the spirited, fast-driving mother, voice-acted by Tina Fey. The voice acting by eight-year-old child actors, Noah Cyrus (younger sister of Miley) and Frankie Jonas (younger brother of the Jonas brothers), were spot on. The film is definitely geared towards younger audiences, but despite the hackneyed plot, it was still endearing.
Are you planning to see Ponyo? If you have a child under 10 years old, it should certainly be a magical experience for them.
Contributing editor Angela blogs about entertaining her family at mommy bytes.
Posted In
BlogHer Conferences
- Home
- About Us
- BlogHer Community
- Conferences
- BlogHer Network
- Special Offers
- Contact Us
Follow us on Twitter:
@blogher @bloghersupport @blogherdeals
Become a Facebook Fan
© Copyright 2009 BlogHer | Terms of Service
Comments
We saw Ponyo last weekend.
We saw Ponyo last weekend. We enjoyed the film. The animation, colors and textures were superb. We are big fans of Hayao Miyazaki's movies we couldn't wait to see this one. My son, who will be 9 tomorrow, loved it!
I saw "Ponyo" with a couple
I saw "Ponyo" with a couple of friends last Sunday. We're all big Miyazaki fans and we had a good time. We appreciated the small scale of the film and the nice observations of characters on the two young children, who felt very genuinely cute and appealing. not the cloying manufactured "cute" I see in so many other films.
I'm impressed by how hard Disney is pushing this film to a general audience and how many kids were in the theater when they saw it. And they all behaved themselves during the movie, which was great.
I don't think the mother's name was purposefully Anglicanized. I've seen sites that would definitely default to the Japanese names refer to her as "Lisa." "L" and "R" are pretty interchangeable in Japanese pronunciation. And since all of the other characters have Japanese names, I doubt the writers of the dub would make a point of changing one characters name to sound more familiar to English speaking audeinces.
I posted some more thoughts on the film on my blog, for anyone who's interested.
Sara
www.inkandpixelclub.com
Wish I knew beforehand!
I'd like to see the Japanese version with subtitles to see all the Anglicized aspects. Having not known that the mother's name was Lisa/Risa beforehand threw me off and was distracting!
And what about the potato chips? Maybe it is common place in Japan to have English words on packaging, I don't know.
Angela at mommy bytes
BlogHer Contributing Editor in Mommy & Family Cribsheet
We'll definitely add this to
We'll definitely add this to our Netflix queue. My all-time favorit Miyazaki character is Phil Hartman as the voice of the cat in "Kiki's Delivery Service".
Stephanie SD
I write about life in Africa at Where in the World Am I? and I blog gluten-free at What I Eat
Newbies vs. Miyazaki fans
I think for complete newbies, the Japanese cultural elements in the movie may feel a bit strange. My husband has never seen any Miyazaki or other anime movies at all, so I felt he was a good test. Even though I am Chinese American, my son felt it was kind of different as well. He did ask that we get the covered bowls for ramen noodles afterwards so that we could be more authentic!
For Miyazaki fans, this movie won't disappoint in terms of its beautiful artful work. I do feel that it is definitely geared to younger children though, in terms of storyline and level of scariness.
Angela at mommy bytes
BlogHer Contributing Editor in Mommy & Family Cribsheet
Magical Thinking
I'm a devoted Miyazake fan. Ponyo wasn't my favorite by any stretch, but I still love Miyazake for his environmentalist subtexts and oh. my. god. the visuals. His pictures are always gorgeous. I also am both frustrated and enchanted by the wierd things that he so often leaves unexplained.
I'm blissfully without kids, but the theater was full of little ones giggling, though at one point -- maybe it was during the big storm? -- a little one freaked right out and had to be taken into the lobby. I found the story a little too childish -- that's probably why it's not my favorite -- but still, lovely work, charming, enchanting.
Nerd's Eye View
@nerdseyeview
Lisa/Risa
Posted this on my blog, but I wanted to make sure any interested parties here got to see it too.
I went on a Studio Ghibli fan forum and asked about why Sosuke's mother seems to have the only English sounding name in the whole film. The answer I got was that "Risa" is a Japanese name for which the Japanese pronunciation sounds pretty much exactly like "Lisa." So the dub goes with the way it's said rather than the way it's spelled. It's one of a few Japanese names that either sounds the same or is exactly the same as an English one. For example, "Ken" is a boy's name in both cultures.
Sara
www.inkandpixelclub.com
we love miyazaki
I can't wait to see it - but my husband and five year old went the other day - she was a bit scared a couple of times, but is asking to see it again and again - really what she wants is the DVD. I think we have all of the other Miyazaki films on DVD.
Don't Assume
I am looking forward to seeing this film. My husband and I are huge Miyazaki fans and own the entire Studio Ghibli collection.
Don't be quick to assume they Americanized so many aspects-- the Japanese borrow A LOT of things from the American culture. Even the big Anime Eyes were inspired by the doe eyed Disney characters. Very often in Miyazaki films, there is English text on stuff. I doubt they would have changed the writing on the bag of potato chips. It's VERY possible that 1.) chips in Japan have the text Potato Chips on them and 2.) the signs in the Japanese version are also in English. We just watched Howl's Moving Castle last night (another Miyazaki film) and there is TONS of English text in the Japanese version. In fact that movie has sort of a European setting that made it weird to watch in Japanese. The dub is so perfect.
So anyway, not to harp on you. Just wanted to let you know!