The Secret World of Arrietty Review

I wish they had kept it secret...

I kinda don't even know where to start with this one.

I went with my grandma one day when we had nothing to do. I wanted to see the new Hiayo Miyazaki movie but I was disappointed.

I absolutely loved Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service and Howl's Moving Castle and it wasn't all Studio Ghibli's fault for why I was let down.

The Breakdown:

The Good:

+Scenery and Setting: Beautiful as always. The animation was flawless. I loved the attention to detail in the settings, especially because they were Borrowers, it was interesting to see how items would be used differently by people who were way smaller than us. The dollhouse was amazing. And the little added touches like when they poured liquid it was only a few drops because to them a drop was like the whole bowl.

+Will Arnett as the Father: He was very subdued and it's kind of weird for me because I've always seen Will Arnett play crazy characters.

+Amy Poehler as the Mother: She toned down the whine in her voice and I hardly even knew it was her. Her voice really embodied the character to the point where I forgot that this was Amy Poehler voicing this mother character.

+Carol Burnett as Hara: I love Carol Burnett as the villain. It reminds me of when I saw her in Annie and her voice seamed so perfectly with the character design.

That was about it....

The Bad:

-The story was weak: It's about Borrowers and how this young Borrower girl befriends this sickly boy. It's supposed to be all uplifting because he's not afraid to die after he befriends her but I thought it was weak compared to his other stories. Totoro is about a girl who's mother is ill, Kiki's Delivery Service about a girl who has to go off on her own and loses faith in herself then regains it, Howl's Moving Castle's about a girl who needs to become old to find out who she truly is and each one of these stories had a dark element to it, something that frightened children or made them think. This one was fairly mild in any subject matter that would be considered "heavy" and the villain was really no villain at all. She was just a doddering old lady who just wanted to prove the existence of the Borrowers. The dialogue was also very weak, unimaginative and fairly cheesy. No one in their right mind would speak like that today. Frankly, it was just very embarrassing to watch the characters speak in such unrealistic ways.

-The voice actors for Arietty and Shawn: The great thing about Howl's Moving Castle was the dub was spot-on. The English words they had chosen fit the mouth movements, and the actors they hired were all top rate. Billy Crystal, Emily Mortimer, Christian Bale, Lauren Bacall, even the kid--Josh Hutcherson was a top notch actor and they all had talent coming out of the wazoo. But it seems to me that nowadways Disney puts too much stock into their "Disney Channel" actors so for this project they "auditioned" but really just picked Bridget Mendler and David Henrie. The former from the show "Good Luck, Charlie" and the other from that...ugh God-awful "Wizards of Waverly Place". I have to say Bridget Mendler was alright, her character isn't very over the top in any way, just friendly and cheerful. But David Henrie, the character is supposed to be young first of all and second of all he's supposed to be sickly. By having this full grown actor play this boy with no modicum of talent for sounding sickly and young...it just broke down the movie. It wasn't believable for one second.

-The pacing was extremely slow: to the point where it was very awkward. The music was minimal and for very long stretches of scenes all there would be is the character in a beautiful setting with no music and minimal sound (just "nature" sounds). Now some people might say I have a short attention span but these are little kids trying to watch this movie here, they have even less of an attention span than I do, and you could tell that the kids and the parents were getting antsy at these long scenes that were milking the art for all it was worth. I love art as much as the next person but not when I paid to see a movie, with you know, MOVING pictures? I caught myself yawning more than once and feeling that uncomfortable prickle on the back of my neck as everyone was just feeling very awkward at the stillness and silence on screen. You could just feel it in the audience.

All in all, I don't know if I would recommend this movie for anyone. If you're gonna watch it, I would probably recommend the NON-dubbed version and brace yourself for one of the most boring movies you've ever watched.