Ponyo (A-)

(Rated G):  Once again the Japanese animator Miyazaki proves that it's possible to turn out a G-rated movie with mature restraint and a magnificent talent in creating fantasies, remarkable for their images & underlying morality tales. 

Aimed more strongly at the little tykes, but fabulously beautiful with enough details to appeal to adults, Miyazaki has reconstructed Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid" to tell the story of a goldfish who wants to join a young boy and his mother as a human, with her mother's approval but father's adamant resistance.  The father's wrath, as a matter of fact, creates one dangerous tsunami as threat to the transformation - with the crashing waves becoming mean-eyed, huge droplets of water that band together in devastating force.

That sort of design - with myriads of sea creatures underwater and grand changes in the atmosphere above - is breathtaking, a visual delight that is virtually flung at you - thousands of minute details creating fantastic, realistic & anthropomorphic images that never end.

Two versions of the film were made.  One in Japanese with indigenous voices, the other made for Americans with a sound track in English with appropriate actors: Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Cloris Leachman, Liam Neeson, Lily Tomlin, Betty White, and, as the little boy, Frankie Jonas with Tina Fey as his capable hands-on mother.  Noah Cyrus voiced the role of Ponyo, the goldfish.  I'm sure it made the film easier to follow for children, but for me, having followed the animator's earlier films with great delight, it seemed that despite the round-eyed look of the humans, the actors' voices grated as anomalies, a bit too "realistic" and not quite as gently Asian as in earlier films.  I wonder, too, about kids not comprehending translations like, "She's opened a hole in the fiber of humanity."

But I knit-pick.  It's a beautiful, even stunning, 103-minute experience.  The master of "old-fashioned" cell animation with his meticulous eye and thoughtful imagination has done it again.  In fact, he might have found a new audience for his earlier, more sophisticated movies.  (Grade: A-)