Howl's Flying Castle is magically ephemeral with heart

Rating: 9/10 (3 March 2006)

Howl's Flying Castle has that unique Miyazaki flair (Spirited Away). The movie masterfully succeeds in achieving a balance between light fiction and deeper meaning exposition. Miyazaki paints an other-worldly environment filled with flying machines, monsters, princes, kings, and wizards, while maintaining subtle messages about freedom of the heart and persevering will.
The movie at times almost seems stream of conscious. The plot meanders to introduce dynamic, colorful characters. However, the focus on the characters proves artistic and compelling; any tangents taken to introduce new characters breathes more life into a film that radiates with personality.
Howle's flying Castle sparkles from the very beginning with beautiful animated scenes and colors intertwined with compelling and unique characters. However, the one weakness to the movie was the ending. It remained consistent to the simplistic charm of the movie, but almost too much so- the ending seemed like an understatement of the entire movie. Some cliché means were used to break the curses placed on the characters, but overall the beauty of the movie more than made up for a plain ending.