Incredibly beautiful , terribly boring

Rating: 5/10 (5 January 2019)

I'm a great fan of Miyazaki's movies. I really wanted to have loved this, I really wanted to. But I couldn't. The animation it´s high quality, as you would expect from Miyazaki movie: It's beautiful, criative, rich in detail and very well built. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same of the characters, which are not so memorable and fun. Here we don't have anthological creatures like Totoro or No-Face, nor do we have such charismatic characters like Mononoke, Chihiro, Haku, Lupin III, Nausicaa, Porco Rosso. The plot is confusing, tiring and boring. Miyazaki movies usually have crazy twists and crazy situations, but the Howl's Moving Castle is just too confusing in excess. The beginning, when Sophie is a young woman, is spectacular, but then the story becomes a mess as it moves on - the idea was good, but it was not well executed. THMC has probably the most beautiful sceneries I've ever seen in a Miyazaki movie, but in term of character, soul, life, story, plot, it falls far short of such classics as Spirited Away, The Castle of Cagliostro and Princess Mononoke.