Since too much time has passed to warrant a standard review of “Ponyo” – Hayao’s Miyazaki’s latest visually explosive masterpiece – I felt a special kind of procedure was in order. So, on a whim, a close friend and I decided to smoke a bowl and go see it at our local theater. What came as a result of that decision was an amazingly rewarding artistic experience. It was like seeing a young Ludwig van Beethoven blend in with the stars as “Ode to Joy” blared on the soundtrack for the first time in Bernard Rose’s “Immortal Beloved.” Only this time, that level of astonishment persisted for the entire duration of the film.
Let’s deal exclusively with the opening sequence. Jelly fish float freely as schools of brightly colored fish swim by. Their movements are balletic. Pockets of color burst intermittently and there are innumerable fantastic creatures gliding above and scurrying atop the seabed. There’s a tall man with long, flowing red hair standing inside a giant bubble at the edge of some kind of aquatic vehicle. He’s squirting droplets of golden liquid onto the ground which explode into rainbows. You can read that again if you’d like. Let it sink in. It’s often suggested that our own imaginative faculties can outdo anything portrayed on the silver screen. Well, it’s my absolute, unadulterated pleasure to tell you that that is not the case, here. Not even close. The realization of his imagination onscreen outdoes whatever you could produce in your mind’s eye after having read that descriptive passage. The visuals presented in this film evoke a kind of celestial chaos.
The characters are insanely cute and lovable. Everyone in the town is kind and sincere. The only people portrayed with any semblance of negativity are, at best, grumpy; “curmudgeonly” would be too strong an adjective. But that’s okay. It’s a kids movie, after all, and a slew of benign characters is anything but unreasonable. Though I must say that if it weren’t for the truly brilliant and creative visual strategy the film has going for it, it might have drowned (no pun intended) me in sweetness. But the film DOES have a brilliant and creative (a vast understatement) visual strategy. It IS thrilling to behold and totally absorbing. It’s what Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” wished it could’ve been: “Under the Sea,” indeed. With Pixar’s track record coming to mind, the fact that all of the images with which I was bombarded today were hand drawn blows me away. If you thought “Up” was the apex of optically-stimulating children’s entertainment this year (as I once did), see “Ponyo.”
I can’t remember ever being this happy after seeing a movie in theaters. I’m…joyous, for fuck’s sake, the fact that I’m still pretty high notwithstanding. “Ponyo” had me swept up in its G-rated, psychedelic glory.
[...] “Jellyfish float freely as schools of brightly colored fish swim by. Their movements are balletic. Pockets of color burst intermittently and there are innumerable fantastic creatures gliding above and scurrying atop the seabed. There’s a tall man with long, flowing red hair standing inside a giant bubble at the edge of some kind of aquatic vehicle. He’s squirting droplets of golden liquid onto the ground which explode into rainbows.” Read the full article here. [...]
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