Giving a low score to Miyazaki’s latest film feels like an anathema… a rudeness to the anime master who came out of retirement to make it. But I sat in the theater analyzing the movie more than feeling moved, intrigued, or even particularly interested.

The Boy and the Heron is about a kid who is relocated to the countryside during WWII. There he meets his new stepmom who promptly goes missing and he sets out on a trippy quest to find her.

This whole film feels like someone trying to describe a dream they had that was very important to them at the time but maybe not so interesting to the listener. But a lot of Miyazaki films have that kind of dream logic, set in a strange alternate reality with go-for-broke rules. Most of those worked for me, but a lot of it didn’t work in this movie. I’m not sure if there’s cultural shorthand going on that explains a kingdom of parakeets and a talking heron… or if that’s just Miyazaki chucking weird darts at a weirder wall.

I felt nothing for the characters, their plight, the mystery, or all those damn birds. The movie was an empty exercise in gorgeous animation and cryptic, often random plot beats and elements.

There’s a lot of story and moments that feel grafted on in order to be odd. I’m not sure if they felt they provided enough explanation or not, but I was often… not exactly lost, but mystified… at to why the story was taking these turns. Mostly it just abandoned me to take in the sights and admire the art.

And, like with most Ghibli and Miyazaki films, the art and animation is superb. Some of the flights of fancy are imagined beautifully, even if I was intellectually and emotionally at a loss as to what it all meant. But as pure act of animation, it was gorgeous.

I’m putting this pretty low in the Ghibli pantheon of films. Not their worst (it’ll take a lot to beat Earwig and the Witch) but far, far from their – and Miyazaki’s – best.

Score: 74