Rented the relatively new Japanese anime film Mary and the Witch’s Flower. This is a film produced by employees who left Studio Ghibli when Hayao Miyazaki retired (before un-retiring) so it has a pedigree of talent behind it. Unfortunately, it lacks the heart and story-telling chops of a proper Ghibli (or Miyazaki) film.
The film features a little girl living on the edge of a mysterious forest. One day, she goes in looking for her lost cat and encounters some mysterious flowers and an abandoned broom. Before you can say, “She didn’t even receive a letter from Hogwarts”, the flower gets on her and the broom and she’s flying away to the local school for witchcraft (and wizardry) in the clouds. Unfortunately, after a friendly but weird welcome to the school, the faculty turn out to be up to something and only, I guess, Mary can save the day.
Nothing wrong with the premise, but there’s a lot wrong with the boring character and uninteresting way the story is told. It looks gorgeous as most big budget anime films do. There’s some quality artistic touches and animation going on… but it’s all in service of a drab story that should be exciting and thrilling… but just isn’t. It’s clunky and slow and I kept waiting for anything truly magical to happen.
So, yeah, not much to promote in this recent anime import. Good pedigree isn’t enough to make a good movie, apparently. I think they could do better given enough time to polish their next script. A general pass unless you are a diehard anime fan, maybe.
Score: 68