Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

GazerRise Fantastic!

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

joshuafagan-64214 How does every Ghibli movie end up surprising me? Other than Tales from Earthsea- an aberration and a movie no one could like- I have not watched a Ghibli movie I haven't liked. Sure, I was lukewarm on My Neighbors the Yamadas, and I thought The Secret World of Arietty was underwhelming, but Ghibli has never disappointed me. I go into every Ghibli movie- except Tales, which I correctly heard was terrible- expecting it to be great. Why is it, then, that every Ghibli movie blows away my expectations. I expected The Wind Rises and When Marnie Was There to be great. They turned out to be some of my favorite films of all time.I expected this film to be a lighthearted and entertaining but shallow romp through a somewhat imaginative fantasy world. After all, it was only 75 minutes long, the shortest theatrical Ghibli movie ever made. I expected to give this film a solid 3.5 or 4. What I got instead was a rollicking, interesting, astounding adventure.It's not just the quality of the films that impresses me. Most films are variations on the same formula. They feel like molds. Except for Tales, no Ghibli movie felt like that. Even if they're just simple here's journeys, like this film, they have a heart and an identity. They offer a unique experience that sticks with you.This is not by favorite Studio Ghibli movie, but it is the best of the five films the studio made between Spirited away and From Up On Poppy Hill. It is the only one of the five- except maybe Ponyo- that understands why Ghibli films are so great. It is driven by emotion and character. It is fantastical and absurd, but it makes perfect sense. It feels just right. The characters do not get exactly what they want, but they are transformed for the better.I would not have guessed this movie was only 75 minutes long. Those early Disney movies were short too, but they felt short. They did not make you feel like you were getting shorted, but they did not feel like grand adventures, if only because over half of their runtime was dedicated to animals doing animal things and enjoyable but pointless song numbers.This film feels like an adventure despite its length. That's the power of animation. It does not feel like a particularly grand adventure, but it does not need to. Kiki's Delivery Service doesn't feel like a grand adventure. My Neighbor Totoro doesn't feel like a grand adventure. They don't need to. They rely on atmosphere and character. They make you feel free. They make you feel like a child again, but not in an oversensory, immature way. Instead, they bring you back to a time when the world was fresh, and you could spend crisp mornings and long evenings in its embrace, back when adulthood was just a wisp in the darkness. There is a right way and a wrong way to pull off nostalgia. Ninety percent of American films do it very, very wrong. Ghibli films do it right, and so they stick with you.The animation quality blows me away. In many ways, it is a prettier film than Spirited Away. The central tower and the labyrinth surrounding it are beautiful. I might use them as my desktop background. The idea that the Kingdom of Cats, where most of the film takes place, doesn't have a day and night cycle and the only place where 'true' sky can be seen is a warp between it and the real world, is mighty clever, and it is only one of many brilliant concepts the makers of the film came up with. The first fantasy sequence in the film, where cats walk through the night on their hind legs in a procession, is one of my favorite sequences in a Ghibli film. The pacing is perfect, of course, but so is the lighting, which is eerie but also welcoming.They work the feline theme to its limit. It's not overbearing, though, and it pulls the audience into the world, which is fairly complex for such a short movie. The layout of the kingdom is wonderful, and I love the long establishing shot of the cattails glowing in the sunlight. There are transformations in this film, just like in Howl's Moving Castle. I think that film does it better, but this film gets a lot of little details right, particularly height.The plot threads are wrapped up a bit too hastily, but it does not feel like it, as they were on the side all along, and the main narrative remained the center of attention. The music is beautiful and helps enhance the European, almost Parisian feel the film is going for. While the characters are not as interesting as the characters in the best Ghibli movies, but they are interesting enough, and they never stall the movie.Haru is a likable and relatable heroine, and she marks the transition toward high-school-aged protagonists that would continue for the rest of the studio's existence and culminate in When Marnie Was There. While she is not as interesting as the protagonists in that movie, she is earnest and thoughtful but flawed. She is a lot less complex of a protagonist than I thought by looking at the promotional material, and while her story wraps up a little too neatly for my liking, she deserves her spot in the crowded stable of Ghibli female leads.Ghibli characters go on not only physical journeys, but emotional journeys as well. They witness miraculous sights, likely fly through the air, and come out as new people with new experiences that they will hold onto forever. The magic of Ghibli- and this film in particular- is the ability to transfer those sensations to the audience. That is their greatest gift.

CinemaClown A spin-off of Whisper of the Heart & the only second Studio Ghibli feature film of its time to be not directed by either Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata, The Cat Returns is 75 minutes of fun-filled, light-hearted adventure-fantasy from the legendary studio that's delightfully engaging, highly entertaining & largely satisfying for the most part.The Cat Returns tells the story of a young girl named Haru who one day saves a mysterious cat from getting run over by traffic only to later find herself being the recipient of many gifts from the King of Cats who also wants her to marry his son. To get herself out of this mess, she enlists the help of Baron but before he can help, she is forcibly taken to the Cat Realm.Directed by Hiroyuki Morita, The Cat Returns brings back two characters from Whisper of the Heart, first being Baron; the cat figurine & the other being Muta; the large white cat. Unlike the previous feature, however, The Cat Returns presents a highly imaginative world that's finely animated, briskly paced, nicely scored & benefits greatly from its short runtime.On an overall scale, The Cat Returns is an impressive spin-off that presents an interesting take on the two cats that didn't have much to do in the last picture but it's the character of Haru who keeps this narrative glued together. Brilliantly directed, solidly written & radiating charm n wonder, The Cat Returns is another quality addition to Studio Ghibli's filmography & is definitely worth a shot.

augurar I guess to begin I'll summarize the movie as I saw it. Initially, the story starts out with an ordinary female student experiencing the minor ups and downs of secondary school. This goes on for a while, but the real action begins when the protagonist saves a cat crossing the street and is drawn into the bizarre, fantastic, and wonderful world of sentient talking cats. The cat world was so original and absurd that I found myself frequently laughing out loud with delight as I watched. Eventually the protagonist gets out of an arranged marriage and makes her way back to the human world with the help of some friendly cats and some animated statues. Along the way she has gained confidence in herself, or something like that.From the summary, you can tell that this is a pretty typical hero's journey / coming of age type of story. Unfortunately, the movie was too short for the story to properly develop. At an hour and a quarter of run time, there is simply not enough room to create and develop characters, introduce a fantastical world, and carry out a plot before the ending. The result was that these various elements (characterization, setting, and plot) all competed for screen time and none of them were really done justice.This was not helped by the writing and characterization, which were quite weak and formulaic. In particular, the supposed personal transformation the protagonist experiences is just not believable. The protagonist is so little developed (she spends most of her time making various dismayed gasps) that she really functions more as a MacGuffin on legs than an actual character.Of the three elements of narrative -- character, plot, and setting, I felt the setting was the best developed. As I mentioned before, I loved the sheer ridiculousness of the Cat Kingdom, somewhat reminiscent of the imperial court of feudal Japan, as well as the dollhouse-coming- to-life aesthetic of the Cat Bureau. Of course, we only get to see a small part of this world, but I felt like the setting had greater potential that could've been explored in more depth.If the creators intended to make the movie a travelogue of the Cat Kingdom, they should have tightened up the story to spend as much time as possible in the fantasy world, and removed some of the irrelevant details from the protagonist's home life. On the other hand, if they wanted to tell an actual story, they should have taken more time to do so and maybe put some real effort into the writing and character development. They could've even done both if the movie were longer. Instead, they aimed somewhere in the middle and achieved neither.As a complete work, I'd consider this movie a failure, but I'm giving it 6 stars for the imaginative world and for making me laugh.

Will Parry This movie is very difficult to accurately review. On one hand, it is horrifying how cheesy, poorly scripted and rushed the movie is, but on the other, we know from "Whisper of the Heart" that this story is supposed to be written by Shizuku (it is NOT however the same story she was working on also named "Whisper of the Heart", which from the few details given in the movie, was more akin to a sort of epilogue for the Baron), and presumably while she was still an amateur writer.Although the story is supposed to be lighthearted, I personally found it went wayyyyy to far in that respect. Sure, it was a good approximation of what you'd expect a story from a young girl to be, however that does not change the fact that the plot is so frequently filled with scenes that even young children would find cheesy, terribly infantile "jokes" (sooo many chicken jokes D:), and worst of all, feels incredibly rushed.I'd like to say that I have nothing against lighthearted movies (I loved Whisper of the Heart), however this movie is at best a kid's movie through and through. The storyline takes Ghibli-cuteness and blows it completely out of proportion. Even "My Neighbor Totoro" feels serious compared to "The Cat Returns". Unless you're the giggly type, you'll want to punch yourself in the face at times due to how sickeningly sugary it can be. The thing about Studio Ghibli's signature cuteness in some of their films is that there is always some depth, some contrast. "My Neighbor Totoro" had the sick mother trope to play with, "Whisper of the Heart" had the uncertainty and dramatic ups and downs of an adolescent girl falling in love and finding her place in life, etc, etc. This film has positively no depth. It's constantly silly, which would work if the lines were funny, but they're not. About the only time I laughed during the film was when Haru first saw Prince Loon ("Eh..... eh... you-... eh :O").Just as bad as the film's cheesiness is it's rapid pace. The actual movie is reasonably long, however it just flies by due to the fact that none of the scene's feel important. They all feel like they are leading up to the next, without ever coming to fruition. Haru spends most of the film getting shuttled from place to place by various characters, such as to the "Cat Bureau" at the behest of a mysterious feline voice, exits that scene being dragged away by "evil" cats, arrives in the Cat World and is immediately picked up by the Kingsguard and is escorted to the castle, where she is dressed in a wedding gown. She is then forced to attend a party, and from there is rushed off in an escape orchestrated by the "mysterious" *cough* obvious *cough* "stranger". Without exaggerating, I can tell you that really the only choice as to where to go Haru made in the entire movie was to listen to the strange voice and go to a "Cat Bereau". After that, all of the supporting characters just whisked her from setting to setting, with her doing nothing along the way other than making astute observations about each setting she's in. She has a minimal interaction with the characters (never once does she ask any questions regarding the psychedelic world she is suddenly dragged into, 10 minutes after having a cat talk to her the first time, her inquisitiveness is limited to asking the names of each character), and we learn very little about her, other than that she's a high school student who has a crush on a popular guy. Oh yeah, and her Mom makes quilts. That's about all of the character backstory in the movie. Which brings me to my next point.The characters remain extraordinarily shallow, even for a children's movie. We never learn anything about the regular duties of the "Cat Bureau", or where the statue/cat came from. Why is the King so obsessed with marrying Haru to somebody (it doesn't seem to matter who)? Where was Prince Loon in-between his first appearance (as the first talking cat carrying the present) and his final appearance at the end of the film? Why did it take him so much longer to return to his world, whereas Haru only took about 10 minutes? Why did Haru act at the end as if the entire bizarre experience had taught her some lesson of maturity (she spent the entire film being dragged around a magical kingdom by cats bent on marrying her)? The film makes no attempt to answer these questions (and many more).The quality of animation was also far below Ghibli standards, though for normal anime I'd say it was usually good, and had some moments where it was definitely well done. There were a lot of scenes with characters remaining static in the background, or worse, repeating the same animation over and over again while the "center" character was talking (i.e the King's neverending dizzy expression). A lot of the scenes were fairly drab too, having none of the excellent shading I've come to expect from Studio Ghibli.In short, this might be a good Ghibli movie for very young children, however don't expect anything even remotely meaningful from it. If you want a real "coming of age" tear jerker, watch "Whisper of the Heart" instead, which is excellent.