Saturday, May 19, 2012

Ponyo

After watching My Neighbor Totoro a while back, I started asking friends for recommendations of other Miyazaki films that would be good for a sensitive three-year-old and got two strong recommendations: Ponyo and Kiki’s Delivery Service.  So off to the video store I went.

(And here I will make a plug for an awesome video store called Five Star Video, the only video store left in Berkeley. They have a great selection of kids films, independent films, new releases and documentaries. A whole wall is dedicated to the Criterion Collection. So please pay a visit, and help keep them open!)

But I digress. We have just watched Ponyo and again, we’ve found a winner for the whole family. Like the classic story of The Little Mermaid, Ponyo spins a timeless, yet modern, tale of love between two worlds.

In the film, a five-year-old boy named Sosuke discovers a strange fish in the ocean near his home and names her Ponyo. When he cuts himself, Ponyo heals his cut with a kiss accidentally ingesting a small amount of Sosuke's blood, and putting herself on the road to transformation from fish to human.

Ponyo, child of an underwater wizard and the goddess of the sea, is a willful creature and unleashes her father’s magic to hasten her transformation. While turning Ponyo into a little girl, the magic spell also throws the world out of balance, pulling the moon perilously close to the earth and causing the ocean to rise and cover the earth’s surface.

There are some amazing, and somewhat alarming, scenes of Sosuke’s town being flooded, and his mother leaves him alone to go rescue people from the local senior center. But ultimately no one is harmed, and the flooded world is actually rather fun and interesting to Sosuke and Ponyo. The two cross town by boat in search of Sosuke’s mom, running into neighbors along the way, and watching fish swimming on the streets below. Ponyo performs several acts of magic, including blowing a toy boat up into a real boat, communicating telepathically with a baby, and walking on water. She is a wonderfully cheerful, enthusiastic and helpful girl, and Sosuke cherishes her.

But, of course Ponyo’s father is not keen on losing his daughter, and something must be done to put the world back in order and end the flood. Ultimately, Sosuke declares his love and acceptance of Ponyo as both a fish and a human, saving the day and making it all turn out right. Both children are great role models, and the parents in this film are caring and loving (although Ponyo’s dad comes across as a bit scary at times). The story has enough twists and turns, and is visually so interesting and beautiful, that it definitely qualifies as a film to please all ages. Our kids watched it twice and will definitely watch it again.

And, by the way, if you do watch it, and you stick around for the credits, you will have this going through your head for days:

Ponyo, Ponyo, Ponyo, fishy in the sea;
Tiny little fishy, who could you really be?
Ponyo, Ponyo, Ponyo, magic sets you free;
Oh she's a little girl with a round tummy.

One of the catchiest (and cutest) theme songs I've heard for a long while!