Not the great master's best, but still captivates

Rating: 9/10 (18 March 2014)

I like a lot of people who love the works of master animator, this movie was right up my alley. If you read many of my reviews you should know that I belittle movies for not being faithful or capturing the spirit of their source material, however I have not gotten around to reading this book so I'll just review the movie for how it is.
Like most movies Howl's Moving Castle follows the three act structure, and to be honest I had a different reaction of each of the movies acts. I really loved the first act. An insecure girl is stricken with old age by a witch so she becomes the cleaning lady for the infamous Wizard Howl. This follows the usual Miyazaki formula, a simple premise, likable characters and top it off with some of the best hand-drawn animation you'll ever see, by the way the movie was going I was looking forward to the rest of the movie. However I did love the first act I just like the rest of the movie.
The middle of the film some subplots drop their anchors and it started getting very needlessly confusing; Like how Howl was a lover with the witch of the wastes, and Howl as even worse self-esteem then Sophie (Hilarious scene, if you've seen you know what I'm talking about), Howl's hearts is lost or something, there is a witch who wants to take everyone's powers away and there was something about a war etc. Yeah like I said it get a lot more complicated then it needs to be.
By the time the third act rolled around it was just a mess. I have to many spoilers in here already so I'm not going to say anything about, like I said before if you have seen the movie you should know what I mean.
But with that said, even with it's problems aside the movie still has the magical, innocent, and heart-warming charm that only Hayao Miyazaki can deliver. I highly recommend it.