Ponyo is a Hayao Miyazaki film from studio Ghibli about a 5-year old boy who befriends a goldfish who longs to become human. While the film featured the typically great qualities of a Miyazaki film, great writing, good story, decent animation, and really great sound effects (maybe it's just me that notices), I felt like the target audience was just way too young for me to get much out of the movie. Obviously with main characters who are five years old, you can't really expect an adult perspective on things. That would be the major difference between movies from say, Pixar, that, while targeted toward children, still have significant content for adults to enjoy... Ponyo really doesn't have that interest. The movie is purely a fantasy that young children are going to love. That isn't to say I didn't enjoy it, I just wasn't especially engaged by it. To be honest, I actually found myself distracted by the notion that a couple of 5-year old children know enough about love to commit to each other for the rest of their lives. This is the central theme of the story and I just couldn't buy into it. I also felt like the animation was "old" by today's standards... maybe simplified is the proper term. Of course, this makes sense if the target audience is young children, they certainly don't care about the details, but again, I found myself distracted by the art and not drawn in by it. In many ways, I also felt like the story mirrored that of The Little Mermaid which is also a Disney film (Ponyo is distributed by Disney in the US). So, not a bad movie, just not for me.
