Anne Hathaway killed the movie!

Actually...I thought Anne did an excellent job. Not just the usual "oh yeah she did well," but I literally was struck by how singularly wonderful her performance was here. She captured Haru's awkwardness and personality in this perfect, totally genuine, offhand, funny way. I was terribly amused. :)

The whole dub was pretty brilliant, in fact. I was similarly impressed with Peter Boyle's and Elliot Gould's work, in particular. And not to mention the great Tim Curry. I'm so glad that I'm not alone in missing out on recognizing him on the first viewing--after watching the bonus features I felt as if it should've been so obvious! >>; His interpretation of the Cat King was instant gold. XD

I just adored the movie as a whole, as I have every single Ghibli film that I've had the pleasure of seeing so far. "Whisper of the Heart," which I watched after this one, was incredibly gorgeous.

Oh, and I had no issue with this movie's length at all. Though, I don't suppose it would have hurt to have added a bit more to it, either.

flowerpower

Most movies that are translated into English have a crappier end quality but I think Anne did a good job, her voice wasn't the most emotional but I don't think she had done a Voice Over before so it takes practice to learn how to bring emotion into a role where you can't use body language to act. Im pretty sure you wouldn't have made the voice over outstanding without either sounding a little flat like Annes did or completely over acting so cut some slack.

[deleted]

I agree with nearly every word of your post, except the liking Anne part, I must say I always dislike her. I hate dubbing, but after reading a bunch of posts here, I got the sense that maybe the dubbed version would be worth watching, but still, I started the original Japanese version. I second guessed myself and rewatched the first chapter in English, EEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!

AH's grunts (sounded like soft porn) and huffs and puffs were double the amount in Japanese, and her voice was WAY too adult for this role, they needed a much sweeter smaller voice. Anyway, it was so horrendous that I rewatched the first chapter again in Japanese and thought YES!!! The Japanese phonetics are beautiful and worth listening to. Haru's voice was sweet and young and caring, whereas there was no 'niceness' in AH's voice, she sounded like a smarmy 19-20 y/o instead of 14-15 y/o young girl. I was so happy to switch back, the movie was nice, but way less than his previous work.

But I agree with you on length also. Everything seemed really rushed. There were practically no contemplative moments and descriptive sections.

-the Baron's tea party was too short
-the kidnapping was too easy
-the 'nasty royal family' vs 'the unhappy peasants' could have used better scripting
-Yuki says go, don't stay... how exactly is that supposed to work, since the exit is via the castle?
-Muta stuck in jellied catnip, WTF?
-Prince's and 'musketeers' fight King and soldiers? (dabs at French revolution but misses entirely)
-Labyrinth doors all line up? whatever! lazy story writing
-Legend of Reynald the giant white cat who at all the fish??? needed more substance
-Kings jewel breaks and loses half his hair, with ONE strike from the baron??????
-Ending, even this was kind of "ok, we're done, Haru's all so self confident now"

I felt like the writer had been given a one week deadline to write a story, go go go, rush rush rush, the film had no depth. Even the animations were less enthralling than previous work.




***So I've seen 4 movies/wk in theatre for a 1/4 century, call me crazy?**

[deleted]

Because she is the opposite of a great actress. Everything about her is as you said, awkward. She is one of the most hideously overrated, pverhyped ones. people pretend she is remotely talented because they're so used to her "nice" girl crap when she had a shred of dignity to her, than guys started pretending she was even more "talented" when she started exposing her ever-growing-or-shrinking tits in movies. You needn't pretend she is good just to satisfy her rabid, obnoxious, equally annoying and rude fanatics.

At least we didn't have to see that mug. That was a small blessing.

Women get more unhappy the more they try and liberate themselves. ~Brigitte Bardot

[deleted]

I never do like the English voice overs in Japanese animation. Especially the women's and 'child's' voices. I think 75 minutes is just right for animated movies. But there wasn't enough interest in this one to cover even it's shorter running time in this case.