The animation is so beautiful & I find the characters cute gorgeous, funny & very heart-warming.*SPOILERS*I figure that the face of the old Sophie changes & she instantly looks younger when she feels excited / happy / alive, even as a very old woman she looks young when asleep, but I wonder if it's only in Howl's vision. Setting.It really doesn't matter, because I don't seem to mind seeing the film once again & again. When we left at 3:30 in the morning still jabbering away about all the imagery and meaning, we realized we had seen true art. Even my 40 year old partner, who had spent the day mountain biking, was dead tired and had never seen a Miyazaki film stayed awake for the entire 2 hours. He's the heart of the castle and only annoyed at his first few scenes then becomes a very likable character.There a few clunky moments in the plot line where transitions between story points weren't very strong, but overall it's another outstanding film from Studio Ghibli. The voice that surprised me was Billy Crystal as Calcifer, the little flame that could. The airships wow, airships in a Miyazaki film? Who would have thunk? are great variations of one's he's used before and there are some rather dark and beautiful scenes of a world at war.Most of the voice work was very strong including Christian Bale Howl and Emily Mortimer as the young version of the heroine, Sophie. The magic being Howl's and the authoritative hand of Miyazaki's direction.
The castle is itself is a mesh-mash of so many haphazardly arranged pieces that an engineer would have an aneurysm just sorting them all out and yet it works. It's that same attention to detail that has made Pixar so great.The animation is wonderful. And the lessons learned are represented in character changes and in the character's physical appearance as well. Īs with all Miyazaki stories, the story teaches without being preachy.
#Howls moving castle dubbed movie
Howl is an interesting departure from Miyazaki's more classical wabi-sabi anime style that most of his heroes and heroines are drawn in as Howl is definitely a very contemporary bishonen.If you're looking for quaint settings, dynamic characters and a very involving character or plot driven story, you're not going to necessarily find them here, but you will find an equally stunning and pleasing movie if you let yourself go and enjoy this passionate, heartfelt and surreal Miyazaki dream. Although it flirts from theme to theme to theme with a kind of animated attention deficit disorder, the landscapes and utter unabated surrealism left me stunned and never bored.Also, from a quizzical character design perspective, Howl is certainly one of if not the most beautiful characters that Miyazaki has ever created. Some people have complained about the lack of plot or story or serious character development, but even though the characters are fairly static, their emotions and the physical changes they undergo as they go through these emotions brings out a higher truth that is seldom given such artistic and natural freedom.I think this is a very smart movie in many subtle ways and it's one that I look forward to watching again on the big screen and then on DVD. World that is as random as one's own dreams.