Just not heartfelt for me. Disappointed in Ponyo

4 years in the making, at one point his final film... and this is it???

The thing is, after so many great movies, I expect Miyazaki to bring nothing short of fantastic films this late in his career. Even his first film, The Castle of Cagliostro, had more to care about than this. Wasn't this supposed to be his final film at one stage? And this is coming after Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke all in a row... probably my favourite 3 of this films. So how do we go from the brilliant epic Mononoke to Ponyo, a film that had little depth and characters that just didn't seem to make me care much for them at all. The character of Ponyo is just trying way too hard to be cute and ends up becoming very annoying, unlike My Neighbour Totoro.

The mum buggers off leaving the 5 yrs olds alone in the middle of a tsunami. Everyone seems to be excited that their town is completely flooded, in what looks like a deeper tsunami than that of 2004 which killed 200,000 people. The bad guy, wasn't really a bad guy at all, it's just everyone kept defying him because he looked strange. In fact I feel sorry more for him than anyone, he got treated like crap. And let's not forget that this entire flood was caused by Ponyo being a little brat of a child.

The movie just wasn't as heartfelt and lovable as normal. Having just watched The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, this is a good example of characters you can actually care about and a solid, realistic plot.

Miyazaki doesn't always make gold... especially in movies he's involved in but doesn't direct (ie Pom Poko was a snoozefest, Whisper of the Heart was lacking, Mei and the Kitten Bus was rubbish) but this, for me, is at the bottom of the list. Unfortunately I felt similarly about Porco Rosso... the character was too unlikable. A shame that's the next Ghibli project after all the possible sequels.