The world of Arrietty is breathtaking, but that’s about all that is.
The Secret World of Arrietty is based on the children's book The Borrowers, one of those faux-classics that everyone pretends is great because they don’t remember/never read it. The movie is about a boy who is going to have life-threatening heart surgery who becomes friends with a girl who is less than six inches tall. She lives secretly with her parents and no one is to know about her. For an explanation of why, hang in there, I’ll get to it.
Arrietty is heavily advertised as being from Studio Ghibli, which distributed all of the Hayao Miyazaki films like My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. He didn’t direct this, but he did write it, so much of the blame should fall on him. This is not in anyway a masterpiece.
The film was made for both US and Japanese audiences; in each country, the voice actors speak that nation’s language. Unfortunately, Japanese and English are so completely different it is rather hard to find sentences that both fit the movement of the characters. Maybe this explains why the voice acting--done by talented people like Bridget Mendler, David Henrie, Amy Poehler, and Will Arnett--is so terrible. It ranges from ridiculously pretend (Poehler) to completely expressionless (Arnett) and makes several critical scenes laughable.
For some reason, the British version of the film (which I have not seen) has world-renowned British actors like Saoirse Ronan and Mark Strong voicing the roles. Maybe it is better. I don’t know why they went so far is to redub the lines for countries that speak the exact same language. Didn’t Harry Potter prove Americans are totally okay with listening to British accents?
The weirdest part is from the villain, the old maid in the boy’s house. She, named Hara (Carol Burnett), is supposed to be comic. She isn’t--at least not in the way intended. She locks the little Borrowers in glass jars and hires exterminators to capture them, muttering about how she hates them for stealing cookies from the cabinets and making her seem delusional for seeing them. She constantly talks to herself saying lines like “Let’s see them call me crazy now!” and other creepy things not expected from a kids film. When things don’t go her way, she smashes objects and writhes on the floor screaming “I’m not mad!” It is sure to terrify children, but it is worth a watch for adults who want to marvel at the fact they seriously put it in a G-rated kids movie.
The movie is trying to tackle big themes--forgotten dreams, death, etc.--but mostly fails because these issues aren’t tackled by just putting them in a kids movie, they are tackled by coming up with a meaningful interpretation. A voice-over narration at the end filling us in on what they are doesn’t cut it. I know the writers on this film can tell far greater stories than this.
The one theme that the picture does get across is a sense of wonder for the dangerous, exciting, and beautiful world around us. It doesn’t do this with dialogue or action sequences, though: It is all accomplished using the wonderful visuals. The world around the characters is breathtaking. The film has long sequences where we see little daily journeys in each character and viewers get to admire the beautiful scenery. Most kids movies wouldn’t take the time to show every little detail of the setting, but this movie does. And it is all the better for it.
Better. But not great.
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