Australia's Best Movie Magazine

Film reviews

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

Careless Love

Sidestepping a more extreme take on prostitution, this is a quietly impressive portrait of a young woman caught in a tragic situation.

Empire Of Silver

Its backdrop is a rich and fascinating one, but the film is let down by a screenplay and direction that fails to register on a personal level.

search the site

Enter search term:

newsletter

Enter your email address below to receive the weekly Filmink newsletter

Enter search term:

Arrietty (Film)

by Annette Basile | January 09, 2012 11:50 | Edited January 09, 2012 11:51

Exquisite both in its beautiful hand drawn style and also in its storytelling, this makes for an inspired and magical journey.

Japanese anime kingpin Studio Ghibli has produced some of the most inspired and brilliant hand drawn works in existence. Films like Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away and Ponyo are loved not only for their exquisite style, but for their beautiful storytelling. Plot and character matter at Ghibli, and Arrietty is no exception. The directorial debut from Hiromasa Yonebayashi - one of Ghibli's key animators - is just magical.

 

It's a familiar tale. Based on Mary Norton's children's book, The Borrowers, it's probably best known as the 1997 movie of the same name starring John Goodman. It's about little people - only a few inches high - who live secretly beneath the floorboards as regular sized humans stomp above them. They don't steal - they borrow, taking what they need from their larger counterparts to survive. Arrietty (voiced by Saoirse Ronan) is a Borrower. She lives with her parents (Will Arnett and Olivia Colman) in an intricately detailed miniature world, where fallen leaves from the garden become towering plants in her lush bedroom. The Borrowers fear human beings, so when Arrietty is discovered by the frail, somewhat neglected boy, Sho (Tom Holland), it turns her family's world inside out...

 

There's plenty of adventure in this story, with the borrowing missions depicted with flair and excitement, and some enjoyably tense moments as the little people encounter the over-sized world above the floorboards. Co-written by Ghibli's legendary director, Hayao Miyazaki (Ponyo, Howl's Moving Castle), and superbly animated, with painterly outdoor scenes, Arrietty comes in three editions -American, British plus the original Japanese. We're getting both the UK (reviewed here) and Japanese versions in Australia. The voice cast create wonderful characters, and it's the relationships between those characters, especially Sho and Arrietty, that makes this so moving and uplifting. Arrietty takes you on a journey - a very beautiful one.