Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, perhaps best known for his work with Studio Ghibli, has gained popularity around the world for his creative and imaginative animated feature films. While they were originally released in Japanese, all of them have been dubbed into English with prominent voice actors and Hollywood stars. Over the past few months, I’ve watched and reviewed the English-dub versions of each of Miyazaki’s 11 films as writer and director.
And now, as I discussed at the end of my CtMC series recap, this will be the first of three bonus posts to review the three films that Miyazaki wrote but didn’t direct. They are: Secrets of the Heart (1995); The Secret World of Arrietty (2010); and From Up On Poppy Hill (2011).
This time, I’ll be discussing From Up On Poppy Hill (2011).
Synopsis: High school student Umi Matsuzaki (voiced by Sarah Bolger) lives comfortably with her family running a boarding home in Yokohama. But, her life starts to change after she meets fellow student Shun Kazama (voiced by Anton Yelchin), who — along with several other male students — is in uproar that their clubhouse might be torn down. Together, they work to rally the students to clean up and ultimately save the clubhouse, all the while grower closer and closer to each other — until a family secret threatens to keep them apart!
Spoiler-free review: Much like The Cat Returns (2002), which I mentioned briefly at the end of the series recap, I can only summarize my thoughts about this movie as: “Enjoyable but weird.” The English voice cast does a good job, although I think there were a few weird choices. The animation is pretty standard, but not in a bad way. It’s well-done, but there aren’t any sequences that really stand out in my mind. The story is well-paced, despite not sounding like an interesting setup. Unlike most of the 11 Miyazaki-directed films, this one doesn’t really have any adventure elements to it, so there’s not a ton of conflict in the movie. Still, the themes are executed well, and the characters all win you over — particularly Umi and Shun. Overall, it’s a cute little story. Weird. But cute. It’s definitely more on the older-kid side (maybe like 9-12 year olds), but no doubt adults will like it as well.
Letter grade: B
Full review and critique: (Warning: here be spoilers!)
If you don’t want to be spoiled, turn back now! Seriously. I’m about to discuss the weird crux of this movie, so if you want to watch it for yourself first, don’t read any further.
So, if you’re reading this now, it means you’ve either already seen the movie or you don’t care about spoilers. Good. Because, holy crap! I cannot believe I just watched a movie where the main conflict between the two leads is that they can’t be together because they might be half-siblings???? What is this movie?!
Obviously, it ties into the whole ‘anti-war/pacifism as a recurring theme’ thing that I wrote about in the CtMC series recap post. And, it looks like it’s not just Hayao Miyazaki’s films, but Studio Ghibli’s entire catalog. Maybe I’ll have to watch all of them to find out. But, the idea that war creates chaos and also leaves children orphaned or fatherless — wondering about who they are and what families they belong to — definitely happens in the real world whenever there’s a violent conflict.
But, I can’t believe that Umi’s dad didn’t tell Shun’s adoptive parents that Shun wasn’t his son. All it would’ve taken was a “Hey, he’s actually Tachibana’s kid.” But, for some reason he neglected to tell Shun’s adoptive parents that because ~drama~. I normally don’t really care about plot holes, but this one is pretty glaring. Did he just hand them the baby and then run out the door? Also, thank goodness Umi’s mom came back from America when she did, or she wouldn’t have been able to explain what really happened.
So, when Shun saw the photo of Umi’s dad at her house, I wondered whether he knew something about him. Then, of course, we find out that he believes Yuichiro is his father. At first, I believed it, and thought this was going to be a story about estranged half-siblings reconnecting, in the vein of One Tree Hill, albeit in a kinda weird way. But, as time went on and neither Umi nor Shun really addressed it, and their feelings for each other kept deepening, I started to realize: “Oh, this isn’t that kind of movie. We’re going to find out that they aren’t related, and then they’re going to end up together.” And, of course, that’s exactly what happens, because this is a family movie after all.
All that being said, it’s not a bad movie. It’s just… weird, as I said. It’ll be forever burned in my brain as “the one where the two leads think they’re related so they can’t be together.” Then again, The Blacklist has strayed into and back out of that territory, so I guess it’s not too bizarre. But, it is weird to see it in something like a Studio Ghibli film.
There are some great things that this movie brings to the table. The themes are well-composed and fluid without really hitting you over the head with them. The idea of old vs. new — tradition vs. modernization — I can get behind that. Why tear something down when all it really needs is people who can take care of it? It’s only in disarray because the previous generations have neglected it, not because it was poorly built or it’s too old.
One more thing I’ll say, which I touched on above, is the voice cast. I thought both Sarah Bolger and Anton Yelchin did a fantastic job. There were a few people who I thought were weird choices, like Ron Howard, who voices a very tall and muscular high school student. I thought Aubrey Plaza was a good choice, but then her voice kinda took me out of the movie every time she spoke. She just didn’t seem to fit quite right. I didn’t even recognize Gillian Anderson’s voice as one of the boarders; the only person I really did recognize was Jamie Lee Curtis. I also thought she was a weird choice, as her voice is so distinct and recognizable, but she did a good job getting into character and toning it down.
So, overall, go watch it if you want. I’d watch it again over The Wind Rises, but not something like Howl’s Moving Castle or Porco Rosso. As I said: “It’s enjoyable but weird.”
And your next bonus CtMC post will be about The Secret World of Arrietty (2010).