Terrible butchery

Rating: 2/10 (3 October 2005)

I've seen some bad butchery of good books before, but really, this is the WORST I have ever seen. I love the book, but the film, I truly truly hated it. It had the same names of some of the characters and places - is about the ONLY resemblance to the book. The rest, its completely different. The characters have no real motivation for their actions, other than that its what the script told them. The continuity is *terrible* (I don't mean Sophie morphing randomly between old and young, I understand that, I mean, how come howl can fly at the start and at the end he can only fly when some weird bird thing). It loses the whole part of howl being cursed by the witch, you never know WHY calcifer makes his deal with howl, WHY the scarecrow is following Sophie, and what IS it with all the huge war vehicles with massive guns? This isn't dominion tank police - but you'd be forgiven for thinking it was. They have nothing to do with the original book, but suddenly, we have to have a huge war with giant flying robot ships, or its just not anime. If I hadn't been with other people in the cinema (who also all hated it BTW) I would have walked out.