A visually pleasing film with depth, but with little weight

Rating: 7/10 (11 November 2017)

As an avid follower of the works of Studio Ghibli, this film had much to live up to, especially considering its deeper themes and the exploration of a different, more subtle sort of romance between two individuals separated by time and space. Unfortunately, this film turned out exactly as I expected and feared, with an interesting storyline and basis, yet the characters, dialogue, and overall crafting of the story itself detracted from the overall quality. I will focus mainly on the negatives in this review, as there are a plethora of other reviews that seem to only focus on the highlights.
The main issue that I had with Your Name was the script. Having seen it both in the original Japanese with English subtitles, and also dubbed (on my second viewing) with the English voice actors, I was really hoping for the proper brevity and gravity that Studio Ghibli so constantly delivers. However, I was met with the characters stuck in an endless loop of telling viewers what they were feeling, and especially in the more intimate moments of the film, where this could have been left more to the viewers deduction – if someone is crying for a particular reason, it is often best left for the viewers to decide why; the character does not always need to vocalise their feeling in order to convey them. For this reason, I felt that I had very little attachment to the characters in a setting where attachment to the characters was vital.
Furthermore, I believe that very little of the humour in this movie worked for the better. As I stated before, in a movie as heartfelt and intimate as this, the dialogue and the humour should be handled with the utmost care, and most of the time throughout the movie, I felt as if it took you away from the story – by all means, there certainly would be moments of humour when a boy switches bodies with a girl and vice versa, but humour was not the purpose of this movie, and this should have been respected.
One last, and slightly more subjective gripe, but I found the music choices to often be contradictory and 'annoying,' to say the least. I understand that the montage sequence, set to an upbeat pop/rock song is a common event in the world of anime, and having seen many anime outside of Studio Ghibli myself, I understand and respect this. However, with a movie such as your name, I found it only broke apart the emotional storyline, and in many ways, lost some of the viewers investment in the story. The piano sequence (the main theme, I believe?) was beautiful; why not exclusively keep the orchestral/piano score throughout the entire movie? Overall, Your Name was a very solid attempt at a very difficult premise, with beautiful visuals, a poorly handled storyline, and not much else. 7/10