Running Time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Rating: G
Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi
Quick Impressions:
My three-year-old was incredibly excited about this movie. On Friday afternoon, when I showed her the preview on my laptop, she demanded five back-to-back encore viewings, and then we had a long, animated discussion about whether Arrietty and her family were more like brownies (because they live inside the walls of the house) or pillywiggins (because she’s always hiding in the flowers). (We’ve been reading her pop-up encyclopedia of fairies nightly, and she usually pronounces pillywiggins a lot more like piggiewiggles, so this was a fun discussion.) When I told her that the movie was not in 3D, she groaned, “Ohhh. Why not?” But when I told her that meant she didn’t have to wear the glasses, she burst into applause.
Then we got to the theater that evening, where she announced dramatically, “I don’t want to watch this movie. I don’t like it.” I am happy to report, however, that she watched the entire movie and with relatively little wiggling (though a bit more vocal interaction than I would have preferred—“WHOA! ‘I can’t believe this!’ say the fairies. ‘I can’t believe my eyes!’”). When I asked her that night if she’d liked the movie, she replied, “Yes, but some of it was very scary.” Yes, I wanted to say, I got that impression when you threw your blanket over your head and moaned, “No! No! No!” every time the antagonist was on the screen.
My nine-year-old stepson also enjoyed it, in a more traditional manner. He did get kind of miffed at me in the car on the way home, when I told my husband that I thought Ponyo was probably the weakest of the Studio Ghibli movies we’d seen. “The WEAKEST?!” he shrieked as if I’d stabbed him. My husband then had to explain that I meant the weakest of that subset, which is an unusually strong group of films compared to movies in general.
By the way, Hayao Miyazaki didn’t direct Arrietty, but he did write the screenplay and (according to the opening credits) do the planning.
The Good:
This is a beautiful movie. Though this sounds like hyperbole, I am actually not exaggerating when I say that I would have been perfectly content to watch the entire movie even if it had told no story and had no plot. The tranquility of the garden around the house with shadows on the leaves, ladybugs crawling happily, trees swaying in the breeze, grass growing—this was all so enchanting and aesthetically pleasing that I didn’t particularly care if anything happened. Of course, plenty happened, and it all happened quickly enough to entertain my three-year-old.
In recent years, hand drawn, 2D animation has fallen by the wayside in this country. Typically, studios blame the animation style for the movie not performing well. Usually the reason is that the movie isn’t very good. What we’ve seen in this country is not the recent failure of 2D, hand drawn animation, but our recent failure in 2D, hand drawn animation. Arrietty is lush, rich, gorgeous, moving, and so funny that the audience frequently laughed out loud.
Granted, some of the humor comes from the vocal performance of Carol Burnett as Hara. Surely the character gets laughs no matter who voices her because of the way the part is written, but Burnett provides a fine and particularly hilarious version of Hara’s character. Practically every time she said anything, the audience burst out laughing (except for my daughter who threw her blanket over her head, wailing, “No! No! No!”).
Here’s another really cool thing about this film—it has three voice casts, the original Japanese cast, a UK cast, and a US cast. I still vividly remember going to see Howl’s Moving Castle in the theater because of my interest in the English voice cast only to discover that the theater we went to was showing the movie in Japanese with subtitles. It was an awesome experience. I’ll never forget the way the protagonist said Howl’s name (which is Hauru in the Japanese original). When I bought the DVD, I was delighted to see that it featured two versions, so that you could listen to the vocal cast of your choice. I’m really hoping that the future DVD of Arrietty comes with all three casts, but it may not (because Disney does the US version, and I don’t think they had a hand in the UK version). The UK cast features Saoirse Ronan, Mark Strong, Olivia Colman, Geraldine McEwan, and Phyllida Law. I’d love to hear them.
I have no complaints about the cast we got, though. I’m not really familiar with Bridgit Mendler (though she is, as I’d assumed, an actress famous from her work on Disney Channel shows), but I thought she was perfect as Arrietty. And David Henrie was okay as Shawn. (I am more familiar with Henrie’s work on How I Met Your Mother and The Wizards of Waverly Place, but I didn’t recognize his voice, which I think is a good thing.) Initially, I found Shawn’s voice a little lacking, but it was his final speech to Arrietty that moved me (unexpectedly) to tears at the end of the film, so he must have been doing something right.
I also liked the casting of real-life husband and wife, Will Arnett and Amy Poehler as Pod and Homily, Arrietty’s parents. They seemed to be playing the roles as if they were speaking Japanese, but in English. (That’s hard to explain, but watch the movie, and you’ll probably see what I mean.) I’ve never seen Arnett play anything so straight. Poehler, as the often hysterical Homily, is the parent who goes for and gets all the laughs. (Sadly, I felt an emphatic kinship with this character.)
But the most laughs in the movie belong to Carol Burnett as Hara, the scheming housekeeper who is determined to find proof that little people do live within the walls and take things from the house so that everyone will stop calling her crazy. My daughter found her terrifying, but everyone else seemed to find her hilarious.
The Soundtrack:
My husband loved the music in this movie, and I will say that it was very sweet and very soft. It was definitely much quieter than the explosions in the next auditorium. I think Ghost Rider was probably screening in there because I was sitting in the very top left of the packed theater, right against the wall, and I suspect, right next to a booming speaker on the other side. This unique listening opportunity pointedly emphasized the lack of explosions in Arrietty.
Funniest Moment:
The fit the frustrated and baffled Hara throws near the end of the film drew big laughs from the entire audience (except from my moaning three-year-old). My stepson was still dramatically yelling, “Where is MY LADY?” both in the car and back at home. The pathetic end of all Hara’s scheming designs is pretty easy to see coming, but somehow when it happens, it’s still hilarious. Burnett’s performance is fantastic, and the mannerisms of the drawn character are hysterical, too, particularly when she looks sad and defeated.
Best Surprise:
I was so relieved that the cat didn’t eat any borrowers (and toward the end actually proved to be helpful) because my three-year-old loves kitties and “piggiewiggles” equally. So at least the parts with the cat weren’t traumatic.
Best Use of a Teapot:
That comes at the end. I thought the final sequence of the film was so lovely, although it went on so long that it almost became comical. In some movies, you get a post-credits scene, but Arrietty doesn’t make you wait for a stinger. Instead, the movie just keeps right on going for over half the length of the credits, as if blissfully unaware that its sharing the screen with a bunch of people’s names.
Best Action Sequence:
Shawn and Arrietty’s scramble on the roof is pretty gripping, as is their earlier fracas with a bizarrely persistent crow. In fact, the crow encounter lasted so long that I had time to remember my own fight with a similarly aggressive seagull over an éclair I’d just purchased in Disney World back when I was twelve. Despite a bleeding face, I managed to hold onto the éclair, but my mother wouldn’t let me eat it to my fury. (Doesn’t ingesting bits of your enemy’s feathers replenish your strength after an epic battle?) The crow scene helps set up the strange nature of Hara, so I suppose it probably has the edge over the later roof scramble.
Best Scene:
Shawn’s final conversation with Arrietty is surprisingly moving. I expected it to be bittersweet, but I did not expect it to be so effective (or in my case, affective since I felt tears welling up in my eyes to my great surprise). It’s a beautiful moment that gracefully ends a beautiful film.
The Negatives:
I have no real complaints about this movie. Some aspects of the story are predictable, but its final emotional impact is unexpected, and that makes up for any predictability in the plot. (Besides, even though Hara’s antics seem formulaic in concept, they’re so idiosyncratically hilarious in execution that no one minds.)
As I said before, I would have been totally satisfied if the entire movie had simply been a series of lovely garden scenes. The film was so beautiful, so simple, and so elegant, that I really have nothing bad to say about it at all. It isn’t an epic masterpiece. It’s a quiet little film about beautiful things and special people, and on these terms it succeeds unequivocally.
Overall:
My husband, my nine-year-old stepson, my three-year-old daughter, and I have quite divergent tastes when it comes to excellence in film. The Secret World of Arrietty satisfied all of us. It held our attention, made us laugh, let us cry, and left us feeling pleased and satisfied. I’d recommend it to anyone.