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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nAnime legend Hayao Miyazaki has come out of retirement for \u201cThe Boy and the Heron,\u201d a sprawling fantasy with semiautobiographical elements. Surprisingly, it\u2019s the more grounded elements that work better, maybe because they\u2019re lifted from Miyazaki\u2019s own life. They\u2019re part of his own story so he made sure to get them right before letting himself indulge in the fantastical portion of the film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film follows 12-year-old Mahito Maki (Luca Padovan) a few years after the death of his mother in a Tokyo hospital fire. His father (Christian Bale) marries his mother\u2019s younger sister Natsuko (Gemma Chan) and together they move to the countryside, to an estate originally built by Mahito\u2019s eccentric architect great-granduncle (Mark Hamill). I really was drawn into the story of the boy being whisked away to a new family life in an unfamiliar place, a position of affluence where he\u2019s nevertheless incredibly lonely and broken. Then the maids showed up and the movie lost me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are seven maids that work at the estate, and I have to believe there\u2019s some sort of \u201cSnow White\u201d parallel there. They\u2019re animated in a different, jarring fashion than the human characters we\u2019ve seen up to that point, and the way they talk and move is off-putting too. Only one of them, named Kiriko (Florence Pugh) is necessary for the story. I have a theory that Miyazaki held a contest among his animation team to see who could design the funniest-looking old lady character in his trademark style, and he liked so many entries that he created more characters just so he\u2019d have an excuse to use them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mahito has such a hard time fitting in at school that he smashes his head with a rock to get out of going. It\u2019s around this time that the gradually-building fantasy elements start manifesting, and I can\u2019t help but wonder if what follows is a result of brain damage. A mysterious heron has been following Mahito around the property. He finally asks it what it wants, and surprisingly, the bird (Robert Pattinson) has an answer. It wants to take him to an alternate world ruled by his great-granduncle, a world where a younger version of his mother (Karen Fukuhara) is still alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From there, the movie is a crazy adventure through an alternate reality, maybe several alternate realties, it\u2019s all so confusing. There are new creatures and bizarro people around every corner. Somehow parakeets are the dominant species, and their king (Dave Bautista) wants to keep it that way. Eventually Mahito learns the hard lesson that the real world, with all its faults and malice, is better than even the best fantasy world, though I question how tempting the fantasy world actually is when it\u2019s filled with bloodthirsty parakeets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe \u201cThe Boy and the Heron\u201d makes more sense to people well-versed in Miyazaki\u2019s style. His contributions to animation \u2013 not just in Japan, but worldwide \u2013 can\u2019t be overstated. He even won a Best Animated Feature Oscar before Disney ever did. This was my first official exposure to his work, and I can\u2019t say I cared for it. I got a sort of whiplash from being constantly thrown into new fantasy worlds with new rules every five minutes. It doesn\u2019t help that this movie is coming out at a time when people are tiring of the \u201cmultiverse\u201d genre. Miyazaki clearly wants to get as many of his ambitious ideas onscreen as he can at age 82, but I didn\u2019t need to be hit with everything, everywhere, all at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Boy and the Heron\u201d is rated PG-13 for some violent content\/bloody images and smoking. Its running time is 124 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver NOTE: This Japanese film is available in both \u201cSubbed\u201d and \u201cDubbed\u201d versions. This review will focus on the \u201cDubbed\u201d version with the English-language voice cast. Anime… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":59051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2616],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59050"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59052,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59050\/revisions\/59052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}