Howl's Moving Castle movie review (2005)

The plot deepens. Howl is summoned to serve both of the warring kingdoms, which presents him with a problem, complicated by the intervention of Madame Suliman, a grotesque sorceress voiced by Blythe Danner, who reminds us of Yubaba, the sorceress who ran the floating bathhouse in "Spirited Away." These bloated old madame types seem to exert a fascination for Miyazaki scarcely less powerful than his fondness for young heroines. Howl cravenly sends old Sophie to represent him before King Sariman, and on her way there, she gets into a race with the Witch of the Waste, who haunts the hinterlands where the Castle roams. Sophie is obviously trapped in a web of schemes that's too old and too deep for her to penetrate, and there comes a moment when defeat seems certain and even Calcifer despairs.

All of this is presented, as only Miyazaki can, in animation of astonishing invention and detail. The Castle itself threatens to upstage everything else that happens in the movie, and notice the way its protuberances move in time with its lumbering progress, not neglecting the sphincteresque gun turret at the rear. Sophie, old or young, never quite seems to understand and inhabit this world; unlike Kiki of the delivery service or Chihiro, the heroine of "Spirited Away," she seems more witness than heroine. A parade of weird characters comes onstage to do their turns, but the underlying plot grows murky and, amazingly for a Miyazaki film, we grow impatient at spectacle without meaning.

I can't recommend the film, and yet I know if you admire Miyazaki as much I do you'll want to see it, anyway. When his movies are working and on those rare occasions when they are not, Miyazaki nevertheless is a master who, frame by frame, creates animated compositions of wonderment. Pete Docter (writer of "Toy Story") and John Lasseter (director of "Toy Story"), his great American supporters, have supervised the English dubbing; online anime sites say however the Japanese voices are more in character (we'll be able to compare on the DVD).

In the meantime, the big screen is the only way to appreciate the remarkable detail of the Castle, which becomes one of the great unique places in the movies.

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