Another winner from Studio Ghibli

Rating: 8/10 (24 April 2013)

HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE is another wonderful animation from Japan's Studio Ghibli, a children's cartoon that proves to be a moving, inventive and utterly imaginative experience for kids and adults alike. To describe it too much would be to spoil the fun; suffice to say, this is a film packed with incident and insight, with engaging characters and larger than life situations.
This time around, it's an anti-war feature, with war providing the backdrop to the central tale. The character of the young girl who is transformed through witchcraft into an old woman is an intriguing one, and the titular castle is a superbly animated creation. I particularly liked the supporting characters in this film: Disney usually make the characters that support the protagonists irritating in the extreme, but here they're quite brilliant: the bounding scarecrow, the living fire, even the Witch of the Wastes.
I find Ghibli films to be fairly hit or miss; some I love, but others like PRINCESS MONONOKE and SPIRITED AWAY are overrated in my mind. Not so this one.