Oh, man, have I been looking forward to this movie for a long time! It's the last film Hayao Miyazaki will ever make (supposedly), and boy was I hoping it'd be good. I'm such a fanboy!
Heck, I got so excited for this film that I actually went whole hog on the movie-going experience and bought me a large soda and popcorn going into the theater.
Big mistake. After two hours, I had to pee... SO... HARD.
But, yeah, there was a movie, too.
- So the plot follows Jiro Horikoshi, the man who designed some of the airplanes Japan used during World War II. Other than a few flights of fancy we see while Jiro is daydreaming or designing, there's very little fantastical going on the film. Basically, there's almost no reason why this story couldn't have been done in a live-action format.
- AND YET... the animation is definitely the films biggest strength. Characters emote in ways that flesh and blood actors can't. The fanciful designs lend a lot of personality to the entire cast.
- Speaking of cast, the voice acting's pretty darn good. Joseph Gordon-Leavitt voices the lead, but you'll also hear John Krasinski, Emily Blunt... heck, even Inigo Montoya's in there!
- To me, the real standouts are the character actors - specifically Martin Short, Stanley Tucci, Werner Herzog, and Mae Whitman.
- Yes, her.
- The film starts off pretty slow, but things pick up right quick once the earthquake hits. Yeah, there's an earthquake, and it's horrifyingly gorgeous how well that scene's animated.
- Tuberculosis is gross.
- There's a LOT to think about in this movie. All Jiro wants to do is create beautiful aircraft, yet the military insists on using his designs for destructive ends, leading almost directly into one of the most horrifying conflicts in human history. The film doesn't moralize for us, but it definitely provides a lot of difficult questions to untangle.
- Oh, and there's a flirting scene with a paper airplane that's just plain GORGEOUS.
- Verdict: Please and thank you.
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