Ponyo movie posterPonyo is the English-language version of the 2008 Japanese film Gake no Ue no Ponyo (literally, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea), the latest creation of animation master Hayao Miyazaki. This movie is a rare creation: an art-house piece that's enthralling to both children and adults.

The plot revolves around Sosuke (voiced by Frankie Jonas), a young boy, and Ponyo (Noah Cyrus), the goldfish-like sea creature/little girl who befriends him and longs to become a real human. Sosuke and his mother (Tina Fey) live in a house on the seaside and await the return of his sea-captain father (Matt Damon, who doesn't have all that much to do). One day, the little boy happens upon a odd, small fish with a human-like face, whom he christens Ponyo. It turns out Ponyo can speak and has an extreme fondness for ham, but before long she's retrieved by her father, Fujimoto (voice of Liam Neeson), a formerly human magician who lives underwater and helps tend the environment, and has a really cool submarine powered by flippers.

Ponyo ultimately runs away from home again, and using her father's stock of magical elixirs, transforms herself into a human girl. She rejoins Sosuke and his mother, who has no trouble at all recognizing the former fish girl and accepting her into her home (you've got to suspend a little disbelief for this movie, but it's well worth it). In doing this, Ponyo unwittingly upsets the balance of nature and even time and space, and unleashes a fearsome storm and tidal wave against the little coastal town where Sosuke lives. I don't want to give away any more of the plot, but, suffice it to say, everything ends up happily as it should in a G-rated picture. Unlike some of Miyazaki's other work (my son was totally freaked out by what little he saw of Spirited Away), there's not a lot of scary stuff in Ponyo, although the storm scenes are a little intense—they even made me a kind of nervous.

There's a lot to love about Ponyo. It has a calm, leisurely pace that never bores, but serves to allow the viewer to soak in all the visual wonder, whimsy, and magic. One of the things that I liked the most were the backgrounds. While the character design was pretty much your standard "Japanimation" look, the backgrounds were beautifully hand painted with what looked like pastels or colored pencils and watercolor. Each scene was like viewing a painting, and the movie is worth watching for that alone. Also, unlike most of Miyazaki's other recent films, there's no use of CGI in Ponyo. It's actually kind of refreshing. In fact, Miyazaki himself hand-drew all of the drawings for the wave animations, in order to get exactly the look he was after. The film at times seems a blend of French Impressionism and traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints.

Other things too cool not to mention:

  • The constant underwater parade of devonian-era fish and sea creatures unleashed by Ponyo's storm
  • Ponyo running on the waves chasing Sosuke and his mother in their car
  • The Wagner references in both the soaring soundtrack and characters (Ponyo's given name is "Brünnhilde")
  • The myriad little details, both of the real world and Miyazaki's fantasy one, included in the movie
  • The two child main characters are neither bratty nor annoyingly cute
  • There's no shameless merchandise tie-in

The English-dubbed version of Ponyo was produced by Disney, and they obviously spent some time putting together an A-list cast for the voices. It's probably also not a coincidence that the voice of the two children are provided by child actors in the Disney stable, Cyrus being the younger sister of annoyingly overexposed Miley, and Jonas being—you guess it—the younger sibling of the eponymous brothers. Additional voices are supplied by Cate Blanchett, Lily Tomlin, and Cloris Leachman.

Here's the trailer, courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes, where Ponyo scores a 95% fresh rating:

Ponyo is showing at the Century Northgate in San Rafael and the CineArts at Marin in Sausalito. It's also playing at the Boulevard Cinemas 12 in Petaluma, and the Metreon, the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, and the Balboa Theatre in San Francisco. Running time of the movie is 100 minutes, and it's rated G. You can visit Disney's official Ponyo website here.