Somewhat disappointing

Rating: 7/10 (18 January 2005)

I'm a big fan of Miyazaki's work, and having seen everything else he's done, I had to see Howl as soon as I could locate a subtitled version. Unfortunately, I must rank it among his weaker efforts. It's certainly not a BAD film - I don't think the man is capable of that - but after the brilliance of Mononoke, and Spirited Away, I was disappointed.
The big problem, putting it bluntly, is that the movie makes no sense. It's possible the fansub I was watching mangled it, but I can't imagine a way for the script to be written to make the events cohesive. It takes the dream-logic of Spirited Away, but takes it to a point that it becomes nearly impossible to get "into" the movie. With Spirited, you always felt like there were rules to the world, even if as an outsider you didn't understand them. This never seemed the case with Howl.
Furthermore, Miyazaki seems to have dipped into his bag of stock tricks a bit too often. There's little in here that you haven't seen in some form in his previous films. There doesn't appear to be anything new he has to say with this film, it's just retreading the themes that have run throughout his work. I could easily forgive Mononoke as being a thematic remake of Nausicaa, since I feel his message had grown sufficiently in the decade separating those films to be worth repeating. That's not the case here.
But, as I said, it's still not a bad film. I suspect people who haven't seen all of Miyazaki's canon will find it quite enjoyable. The richness and nuance of his character animation continues to grow. No one makes more expressive animated figures than Miyazaki, and the characters alone nearly carry the film. And supported by another wonderful score by Joe Hisaishi, as in all of Miyazaki's works, there are moments of staggering beauty rarely seen in films of any genre or style.
And despite the incomprehensibility of the plot, he makes it compelling and watchable, even as you have no clue what's going on or why.
So, I give the movie an above-average rating and a recommendation, simply on the strength of being a Miyazaki film. The worst of his movies is still better than just about anything else out there. But the purists are likely to be a bit disappointed.