Kiki's Delivery Service

Year: 1989
Country: Japan
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Watched through: library DVD
Also known as: Maho No Takyubin, The Witch’s Express Mail

The scenario: As a thirteen-year-old witch in training, Kiki has to leave home and strike out on her own. She ends up in a seaside town, where she decides to set up a flying delivery business.

First impressions: My first exposure to this film was the Disney channel; I recorded the dubbed version and thought it was alright, but several years later I mentioned the film to a friend, who insisted that I borrow her DVD and watch the subtitled version. And, wow, what a difference it made. The different versions of this film could be a case study in how a character’s voice can change their personality; there were some pretty surprising story differences, too, which make it hard for me to recommend the dub. Overall, the original version is vastly superior, so seek out the subbed version if you’re interested in seeing this film.

Plot and story: The story of this film is very loosely constructed, and the plot has a deliberate pace that suits the “slice of life” content well. After Kiki leaves her parents’ house and arrives in her new city, the rest of the film shows her daily struggles with her job, her peers, and her own confidence. Kiki goes through swells of self-assuredness and self-doubt, just like any young teen, and the film’s most dramatic point is when her loneliness and homesickness cause her to lose her magic. She manages to pull herself together in the end, however, and the epilogue confirms that she has “found herself,” so to speak. More than anything, this is a coming-of-age story, with the emotional ups and downs, difficulty fitting in, and importance of finding one’s place in life played out superbly in the story. 18/20

Characters: Among other things, Miyazaki is known for his realistic, appealing heroines, and Kiki is no exception. As mentioned above, she acts a like a real thirteen-year-old, and responds to the pressures of her life in realistic ways. You can’t help but root for her, whether she’s cheerful or depressed. Her cat, Jiji, is her foil in some ways, being aloof when Kiki is intent and skeptical when Kiki is certain; their interactions are always interesting because of this. The secondary characters, such as Tombo, the artist, the bakers who take in Kiki as a tenant, and the elderly woman she befriends, are all likeable, and they all eventually help Kiki find herself. 19/20

Voices: This is a review of the original Japanese version of the film, so judgments about the English dub don’t apply. However, I feel I have to mention my biggest beef with Disney’s version: the casting. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Kirsten Dunst is a good actress, but she is extremely wrong for Kiki. Primarily, she sounds way too old. Secondly, she’s too high-pitched, changing Kiki from a plucky adolescent to a whiny teen. Even stranger, though, was the choice for Jiji. The late and great Phil Hartman did the voice of Jiji as his last film role, and I can’t say his performance is bad. It’s great, in fact. But it changes Jiji into an entirely different character. In the original, Jiji has a cute voice, and occasionally has sardonic dialogue. By contrast, the Hartman Jiji is a cynical smart-alec with a drawling northeastern accent. Overall, the dub can’t hold its own when compared to the original. All of the original actors perfectly suit the personalities the characters were meant to have, and the performances are great all around. 18/20

Music: The original film features two Japanese pop songs (“Message in Rouge” and “Surrounded by Gentleness”), but neither of these was used in the dub, probably for licensing reasons. This is yet another thing that hurts the quality of the dub, since the original songs are more fitting in both theme and tune than the pale imitations used in the English version. The score is great as well, with the most memorable music being in the scenes with Jiji and the dog. 18/20

Visuals: Studio Ghibli is incapable of producing a bad-looking film; this film showcases the sumptuous color, simple character design, masterful movements, and beautiful backgrounds that the studio is known for. It lacks the computer-aided flair that some of their more recent films have, but what else can I say? Fantastic animation for a fantastic film. 18/20

Overall grade: 91/100 (A)

The Sword in the Stone

Year: 1963
Country: United States
Director: Wolfgang Reitherman
Watched through: library DVD

The scenario: A powerful but rather bumbling Merlin tries to educate a young page named “Wart,” who eventually becomes King Arthur.

First impressions: This is one of several Disney features to be directed by Wolfgang “Woolie” Reitherman, and it has two things in common with his other work: the plot is noticeably episodic, and detailed stories take a backseat to character-based humor. The latter is not necessarily a weakness, but the former certainly is. Reitherman has been called un-ambitious in his storytelling by animation historians, and while his films are not without charm, they are definitely not as strong as some of the studio’s other productions.

Plot and story: The problems with this movie start off right away, as we are dropped into a scene with Merlin the wizard; he has predicted that some boy will come dropping through his roof, and he is prematurely obsessed with educating this unknown boy. Little Arthur arrives just as predicted, and he goes along with Merlin’s propagations in a kind of passive bewilderment that doesn’t make for a very gripping introduction. The rest of the movie consists of Merlin’s hare-brained attempts to better the young page so he can “amount to something.” The main sequences that make up the plot can be called choppy at best and nonsensically disjointed at worst, as none of the three major “learning” scenes have any sort of effect on the central story (the last is particularly pointless). The final sequence, in which Arthur pulls the sword from the anvil and is declared king, has no thematic or story-based connections to anything that has happened previously in the film, and the film ends very suddenly with everything fine and dandy but no lessons learned by anyone. Was this film being written as it was being made, or did the writers just not care? 10/20

Characters: This is the film’s main strength. The plot may be poorly thought out, but most of the characters have great appeal. The best parts of the film are the biting dialogue plays between Merlin and Archimedes, the highly educated talking owl. Merlin is intelligent, but is also rather inept and gets flustered frequently. Archimedes, on the other hand, is critical and curmudgeonly, but shows a friendlier side as the film progresses. Even without a strong story, it is very funny to see Merlin get his beard caught in doors and have trouble remembering his own spells. By comparison, the rest of the cast is kind of dull. Arthur is very passive and rather bland for a hero. Kay and his father Sir Ector have one-note personalities, as do the rest of the minor characters. The villain, Mad Madame Mim, is granted some personality, being delightfully macabre and humorous neurotic, but she is not very threatening. While these characters are fun to watch, it is both disappointing and rather baffling to see that not a single character is given a whit of development; everyone is just the same at the end as they were at the beginning. 14/20

Voices: One thing that bothered me while watching this film is that Arthur’s voice sounds different almost every time he appears; sometimes it was even different within the same scene. At first I was willing to chalk this up to his actor going through a vocal change, but the cast list on iMDB reveals that he was actually voiced by three different people. Um, why? Also, why did the sound editors feel the need to use the exact same, “whoa, what, whoa” exclamation seven times during the film? It doesn’t sound good even the first time. Anyway, the rest of the cast is good, but Merlin’s voice is the best by far. A fair job on voices overall. 15/20

Music: This film is a musical, but it doesn’t have any of the same spectacle as the Disney films before or after it. The songs are sung by a narrator, by Merlin, and by Madame Mim. The songs sung by Merlin are somewhat pedantic affairs with lyrics that relate to the lesson he is trying to teach, Madame Mim sings a jolly song about how evil she is, and the narrator sings the backstory in the film’s opening. These songs get passing marks for being pleasant and sometimes funny, but they are neither catchy nor memorable. The instrumental score is even more forgettable. 13/20

Visuals: Since this film was made in the wake of an expensive failure for the studio (Sleeping Beauty), it had to be relatively cheap to produce. And the difference really shows. The characters are more static, the animation is less smooth, and the colors and backgrounds seem somewhat slapdash. The palette has a distinctly 60s vibe—lots of blue and orange—that makes the film look dated, and the physical animation is not up to snuff with the studio’s better films. It’s not horrible, but the visuals (along with all the other aspects of the film) compare very unfavorably when stacked up against Disney’s better-known productions. Though is has many loyal fans and is bound to remain a nostalgic classic, this film shouldn’t be confused with the Disney Masterpieces. 14/20

Overall grade: 66/100 (B-)