cute, but not just for kids

Rating: 9/10 (25 January 2006)

After years of the Totoro plushies, I had a feeling this would be ultra-cutesy, Disnified, singsong fluff. It's not. It starts out with 2 little girls, aged about 9 & 4, moving into their new house. The house is pretty run down, and it's my guess that the family moved there either to be closer to the hospital where the mother was, or to help pay for the mother's medical bills. After seeing some "dust bunnies", which later appear in Miazaki's "Spirited Away", the youngest girl goes exploring & finds a tunnel into another, magical world. When she falls asleep on Totoro, who is like a big cat tolerating a child pulling its tail, she wakes up in the tunnel, and when she tries to find her way back, the tunnel just goes back outside again. About 20& of the movie is like this, the girls discovering magic things that disappear. For being young, they have a lot to deal with. In one scene,, they wait all day & night in the rain for their dad to come. Totoro appears, and adorableness ensues. At the end, in the credits, the animators hint that the mother comes home & possibly has another baby. It's a good end to a good story, but one that might be missed if you leave early :P