Ponyo Review

Hayao Miyazaki made Ponyo as a refusal of the computer. Studio Ghibli shut its computer graphics section so that everything could be drawn by hand, and the sea is drawn as a living thing: waves become great fish with eyes, the flood carries Devonian fish over drowned roads, and a little girl runs along the crests of the storm to reach the boy she has decided to love. It is loosely The Little Mermaid, retold for a five year old's sense of justice, and it never pretends otherwise.

Sosuke and Ponyo are among the most natural children Ghibli has drawn, and Lisa, his mother, racing her tiny car through the storm and then making ham ramen for a fish who has just become a girl, is one of the studio's great adults. The story is the weakness critics agree on. Fujimoto's plan and the moon drifting toward the Earth are waved into place rather than explained, and the ending, a test of love settled by a small boy's promise, resolves in a few minutes. Reviewers generally place it below Miyazaki's best work, and it is still a visual feast and one of the gentlest films he made.