THE LAST TIME I SAW THIS TITLE SCREEN about ten years ago it heralded twenty minutes of cursing and one broken gameboy. Ah, the innocence of youth.It’s pink, because that will stop me getting mad at it.

That decided, Macro Zone here I come…

I just had a pleasant/strange happenstance.

A friend made a drink for me. I just said “whatever you’ve got going.” It was cheap hyper-concentrated orange squash, sugary neon orange liquid that you can feel dissolving your teeth with every mouthful.

This wouldn’t have been particularly amazing if a few moments later I hadn’t bitten into a biscuit (’Coconut Rings’ - pseudo coconut flavoured shortbreads), which sent me reeling back to my childhood where one of the earliest of earliest memories I have (perhaps indeed the earliest) is of enjoying this exact combination at my toddlers playgroup, aged two/three-something.

And then I remembered all the mushy soggy biscuits getting baby-booty-stomped into the carpet, falling off the climbing frame, bashing my teeth on my drinking beaker (repeatedly), and getting my first kisses from a girl called Bethany (who, after a few years later, I wouldn’t ever know again).

And as I come-to in modern day Europe, Sweet Trip’s Velocity : Design : Comfort is playing in the background and all of a sudden it’s the most poignant moment in the world.

INCREDIBLY DISAPPOINTING would be a short (if not sweet) summary. Or maybe just ‘average’, which is the worst thing you could possibly say about a film from a director who had previously sought to delight through imagination and vibrancy.

In Howl’s Moving Castle, Miyazaki struggles to find original ground and ends up retreading now increasingly familiar ideas and motifs from his previous work, even the opening title sequence seems to reuse music from his breakout hit Spirited Away. We have a teenage girl (Sophie, the protagonist), a silent and ineffective partner (Turnip-head), a humorous sidekick (Calcifer), a collection of wishy-washy tag-alongs (Markl & co), vague enemies which are totally unexplored, and a mysterious and largely undeveloped male teenager, who here happens to be the titular Howl. All characters also suffer from abysmal phoned-in performances for the English dub (I can’t comment on the original), in particular Christian Bale (Howl) who barely varies his delivery throughout, and Emily Mortimer (Sophie) who gives an appallingly flat performace for the lead. Only the ever-reliable Billy Crystal gives value for money as the fire daemon Calcifer, though it’s nothing incredibly special - more accurately simply a cut-price Robin Williams.

Elsewhere there are more significant problems. The story is a mess both in terms of plotting and pacing and scripting. It begins well enough but falls into predictable buddy-buddy routines all too early, fails to head in any clear direction for a long time and then ends on a half-hearted note (which is to say ridiculously hokey) with a total non-conclusion. Whole ideas are thrown into the mix and left unexplained, like the war which is at the center of the action, the king (queen?), the other wizards. Miyazaki could arguably be even trying to say something about the Iraq war, with a myriad of none too subtle contemporary references, but even that didactic aspect is lost.

You will likely not leave the cinema satisfied, unless you are ten years old - and even the kids behind me were bored to tears long before the finishing line. A rethink is needed over at Ghibli studios..

4/10.

Head asplode.

More here.

For reference this is about the only time you’ll catch me linking to IGN, but alas - do it for the eyecandy.