Ponyo (Blu-ray) (2008)

"Don't tell Walt Disney, but Director Hayao Miyazaki really holds the keys to the magic kingdom.  Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
"Best of all, Ponyo never ceases to be a genuine odyssey in short pants.  Michael Sragow, Baltimore Sun
"It is a work of great fantasy and charm that will delight children ages 3 to 100  Deborah Young, The Hollywood Reporter

Editor's Note Fans of Hayao Miyzaki's stunning animation can rejoice since the Japanese master still hasn't made good on his promises to retire. In this film, the story of "The Little Mermaid" is brought to modern-day Japan, where a small fish named Ponyo wants to live with a five-year-old boy named Sosuke.

	Joe Hisaishi - Composer
	Cate Blanchett - Voice
	Noah Cyrus - Voice
	Matt Damon - Voice
	Tina Fey - Voice
	Frankie Jonas - Voice
	Cloris Leachman - Voice
	Lily Tomlin - Voice
	Betty White - Voice
	John Lasseter - Additional Directing
	Brad Lewis - Additional Directing
	Peter Sohn - Additional Directing
	Kathleen Kennedy - Producer
	Frank Marshall - Producer
	Steve Alpert - Producer
	John Lasseter - Executive Producer
	Hayao Miyazaki - Executive Producer
	Melissa Mathison - Screenplay
	Hayao Miyazaki - Screenwriter
	Toshio Suzuki - Producer
	Hayao Miyazaki - Director

Premiere
"Hayao Miyazaki's latest masterpiece, a delightfully sweet, extraordinarily imaginative LITTLE MERMAID-esque children's fantasy." 09/12/2008

A.V. Club
"[O]lder kids and even adults are unlikely to get bored, thanks to the story's unforced sweetness, giddy highs, and stunningly beautiful visuals." -- Grade: A 08/13/2009

Entertainment Weekly
"[A]n emotionally profound, visually thrilling animated reimagining of the classic fairy tale THE LITTLE MERMAID..." -- Grade: A 08/21/2009

USA Today
3.5 stars out of 4 -- ?With its ever shifting world and palpable sense of magic, PONYO captures the wonder of being a child....Miyaki is a master at interweaving reality and fantasy.? 08/14/2009

Los Angeles Times
"PONYO begins not with the ordinary but with an extraordinary vision of a dazzling undersea world that is rich with visual wonders..." 08/14/2009

Chicago Sun-Times
4 stars out of 4 -- "This poetic, visually breathtaking work by the greatest of all animators has such deep charm that adults and children will both be touched." 08/13/2009

Wall Street Journal
"[I]ts themes -- the relationships between parent and child, between the young and the elderly, between friends, between man and nature -- are large and fully realized." 08/14/2009

New York Times
"PONYO is the latest masterwork from Mr. Miyazaki....[The film] shares thematic and visual similarities with his earlier work, notably its emphasis on the natural world, its tumults and fragility." 08/19/2009

Rolling Stone
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "[T]he delicate colors and hand-drawn, proudly 2-D images are breathtaking....Miyazaki works marvels." 09/03/2009

Chicago Sun-Times
Included in Chicago Sun-Times's "The Ten Best Animated Films Of 2009" -- "The word to describe PONYO, is magical." 12/24/2009

Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "With its pastel palette and loose line-work, Ponyo's handmade look fits the film's child-like spirit like a mitten." 01/26/2009

Empire
4 stars out of 5 -- "There's a edgy beauty that sticks in the mind, most of all in the sequence where Miyazaki unleashes a raging tsunami on the Japanese shore." 02/05/2010

Sight and Sound
"The bravura animation, showing the massive magic waves crashing explosively against a coastal road, conveys the might of nature better than any dialogue." 03/01/2010

Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
There is a word to describe Ponyo, and that word is magical. This poetic, visually breathtaking work by the greatest of all animators has such deep charm that adults and children will both be touched. It?s wonderful and never even seems to try: It unfolds fantastically...The G-rated feature tells a story both simple and profound. Sosuke, a 5-year-old who lives in a house on a seaside cliff, finds a goldfish trapped in a jar on the beach. This is Ponyo. Freeing her, he is rewarded by a lick on a finger that heals a cut. And by tasting human blood, we learn, Ponyo gains the ability to transform between fish and human...The film opens with a spellbinding, wordless sequence beneath the sea, showing floating jellyfish and scampering bottom-dwellers. The pastels of this scene make Ponyo one of the very rare movies where I want to sit in the front row, to drown in it. This is more than ?artistry.? It is art...This begins a friendship. Sosuke (the voice of Frankie Jonas, younger brother of the Jonas Brothers) protects Ponyo (Noah Cyrus, Miley?s kid sister) in a pail until arms and legs pop spontaneously from her body and she becomes a little girl who speaks his language. He takes her to school and to the nursing home next door where his father works; all is wonderful until we discover that by crossing the divide between land and sea, Ponyo has triggered ecological changes that unleash a dangerous tsunami that floods Sosuke?s village right up to the doorstep of his house...This begins an exciting escape in a toy boat that Ponyo magically enlarges, and a dreamlike journey among flooded treetops in search of Sosuke?s mother. From the surface, they can see giant prehistoric fish, awakened by the great wave, which cruise the highways his mother once drove...Miyazaki is the Japanese creator of My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Howl?s Moving Castle and many other beloved films. Already I have heard from a few people who don?t want to see it ?because it?s Japanese.? This is solid-gold ignorance. ?Is it only dubbed?? I was asked. You dummy! All animated films are dubbed! Little Nemo can?t really speak!...Miyazaki is known as the god of American animators, and Disney has supplied Ponyo with an A-list cast of vocal talents, also including Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon and Tina Fey. The English-language version has been adapted by John Lasseter (Toy Story, Cars) and, believe me, he did it for love, not money. There are so few movies that can delight both a small child and the adult in the next seat. Here is one of them. - Roger Ebert

The Onion A.V. Club 10 of 10
When Disney released its take on Hans Christian Andersen?s short story The Little Mermaid back in 1989, some purists griped that in excising most of the story?s agony and tragedy, Disney lost the story?s heart. Those purists won?t be any more comfortable with Ponyo, another animated take on the story, this time from Japanese writer-director Hayao Miyazaki. It?s aimed at particularly young audiences -- in the Miyazaki oeuvre, it?s much closer to My Neighbor Totoro than Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke -- and it barely has conflict, let alone a sense of menace or threat. It?s essentially a stroll through a fantastically detailed pastel world, in which the plot is little more than an excuse for Miyazaki to dive into a world teeming with colorful (and sometimes prehistoric) life...While the story is modeled on a traditional fairy tale and a traditional love story, it?s more primal than it looks. In keeping with Miyazaki?s usual motifs, Ponyo?s attachment to Sosuke is an unthinking force, as avid and single-minded as the decapitated forest spirit in Princess Mononoke, or the crazed, murderous Ohmu in Miyazaki?s Nausica? Of The Valley Of The Wind. Miyazaki never lets viewers forget that Ponyo is human-shaped but not actually human; her shape shifts and dissolves back toward fish-dom whenever she exerts her magical powers. In this and other things, the story operates on a fluid dream-logic, or the storytelling logic of a very small child: Events melt into each other without urgency, and a simple act like making and drinking tea is treated with the same complacent, wondrous gravity as magic that calls wave-monsters into being. Even so, older kids and even adults are unlikely to get bored, thanks to the story?s unforced sweetness, giddy highs, and stunningly beautiful visuals. Even in the unspoiled Devonian, real life never looked this good. - Tasha Robinson