Hand-crafted by Miyazaki and his team at Studio Ghibli and localized by the Pixar wing of Disney animation, "Ponyo" is the kind of animated feature that turns up in the children's section of the library or video store, but is as of much interest to film-lovers of any age as it is to the little 'uns.
Miyazaki takes the tale of "The Little Mermaid" (influenced by the Hans Christian Andersen story more than by the previous Disney version) and presents it in his own style: modernized, Nipponized and with a healthy dose of environmental sentiment. Here the escapee from the sea is not a mermaid princess, but a kind of goldfish with a girl's face, who sneaks out of her sea-wizard father's underwater ship and up to the shore. Here she is scooped up by a little boy named Sosuke, who carries her around in his pail. Eventually Ponyo, as he names the girl / fish, is dragged back to the sea by her anxious father but then busts out back to the world above the sea transforming herself into an amphibian and then a little girl, in search of her friend Sosuke.
Miyazaki invests every frame with love - love of beauty, love of the possibilities of what an animated film can be and a love of his characters. Sosuke's mother is voiced by Tina Fey, who is pitch-perfect as she captures the mixture of love, frustration and concern felt by a mother of a five-year-old whose husband is constantly dragged back to his work on the sea. The kids do a great job of making Sosuke and Ponyo sound like real kids - neither too dull nor too cutesy but bright, curious, playful and brave. As the sea-wizard, Liam Neeson's voice is always welcome, even though his character is the only one whose motives often seem unclear or just plain confused. The sub-plot that follows him as he plans to maybe destroy the world or balance nature or... something, is one of the very few weak points in the film. Miyazaki doesn't need to put the fate of the world at stake to make us care about the fates of his characters.
As always in Miyazaki's world, the artwork is as much the star as any of the performers and it is gorgeous in its painterly detail and joyful in motion. This really is a film where nearly every frame could stand up as its own work of art. But Mizayaki is not just going for beauty in and of itself - he and Team Ghibli do a wonderful job of creating character through the subtlest of gestures and find wonderful new ways of depicting the watery world, both below and as seen from above. They also give us one of the most thrilling moments I've ever seen in an animated film as Ponyo, newly transformed into a human girl, runs across the backs of the waves of gigantic fish waving to Sosuke as he and his mother race the flood up a mountain road.
In a very touching interview with John Lasseter, Miyazaki explains that with "Ponyo" he wanted to "make a film for five-year-olds." For so many animators this would mean simplifying and dumbing down, going for the obvious laugh and the obvious teary moment, talking down to the tikes. Miyazaki does none of this, and his film shows his obvious respect as well as affection for his audience. He gives us exactly the kind of awe, beauty, bravery, curiosity and love that real children feel, and not the sentimentalized, pre-packaged "childish wonder" that American studios like Disney often indulge in.
Like the very best children's books, "Ponyo" tells a simple story in a beautifully created world in a style that is unique to the storyteller, but accessible to anyone of any age, in any culture.
