Hah! Forget computers! ...CGI is so last year.

Rating: 8/10 (10 March 2006)

I remember when I saw Red's Dream. That's one of Pixar's first shorts along with Luxor Junior, and I remember it because I was working in a computer graphics company in the UK and it was about 1986 ish. We all huddled round a small TV and watched awed as raindrops fell outside the bike shop (Red is a unicycle) and hit the puddles, rippling out and distorting the reflection of the shop lights. It was a magical moment where we first saw that never seen before water effect and all went "Wow".
...Hey mac. What about Howl's Moving Castle - What's your point? Move it along! Ahem, well... The animation in Howl's is of frankly awesome quality. I'm bleating about CGI water above and then I go and see Howl's and there are waves coming up the beach in one scene and they are translucent, perfect and get this ...hand drawn! There is just something about the craft involved in replicating an effect like that with a pencil and some colourists. No it's not CGI style realistic. It's better than that. There is sometimes a thing about CGI in that it is too perfect. That's why companies try hard to top Toy Story. Great movie but everything is so round, hard and shiny.
The water in Howl's is like a poem about water rather than a slavish copy and therein lies the difference. ...Something like the essential difference between a painting and a photograph.
That's just one item in one scene and things like that go on throughout the movie and my eyes just basically got wider and wider. I find the whole thing just astonishing and really must look up the other movies like Spitited Away and Princess Mononoke. To paraphrase another reviewer. (This ain't CGI) "This is Art".
Ah... but you wanted to watch a film really didn't you? It works well enough but I'm going to have to give it an 8 instead of a 10. Quite simply there is something that probably makes sense in Japanese that goes wrong here and makes the story a little puzzling and disjointed in English in places. Other than that it's great. You'll continue to see some scenes in your mind's eye for months afterwards. This movie is not easily forgotten. (And my 12 year old daughter thought it was great too!)