pointless and annoying

Rating: 5/10 (7 September 2006)

I am baffled by how much people like this pointless and annoying movie. The protagonist is an irritating and uninteresting little girl, and the film has essentially no plot. It presents a series of weird encounters and situations, without ever a sense that it's going anywhere, and without ever showing an interesting way of dealing with them by the little girl. Rather, whatever she does happens for magical reasons to have been the right thing, giving the impression that we're watching her have one of those dreams in which she can do no wrong. For some reason people like this parade of strangeness without a plot or a likable protagonist enough to rate this film higher than Grave of the Fireflies and Princess Mononoke, excellent films that actually have great characters, compelling plots, and in the latter case, also very imaginative encounters and situations.