The Secret World of Arrietty? Yes, it’s the basement. And I think they eat buttons for dinner. It’s all terribly clever. Or not.
“Check it out, a fun new Miyazaki!”
“It’s not that fun.”
“It’s not that new.”
“It’s not even really a Miyazaki.”
Some years ago, I developed my own Hayao Miyazaki evaluation tool set. Here goes:
Real title: Kari-gurashi no Arietti
Superfluous footage: About 5-10 minutes (a Miyazaki record!)
Silliest voice overdubbing: Will Arnett
Best visual: Doll House
Fantastical Miyazaki World rating: 2 (out of ten)
Goofy “I’m a noob”-ness: 2. Arrietty is not really a noob here, just inexperienced.
Parental irresponsibility: 5. Crazy mixed bag. Arrietty’s parents are overprotective (a Miyazaki first!), yet at the same time a set of caregivers leave a boy weakened and dying with a congenital heart condition to the care of a crazy woman.
Incomprehensibility of ending: 4. Much less incomprehensibility than just plain disappointment. The film was just getting good and then *poof* we’re done.
“Borrow” is quite the euphemism, no? Say, Fat Tony, cam I “borrow” ten large? What’s that? Do I plan to return it? Don’t be silly; I’m a Borrower.
What justifies sloth? Theft? If a race of giant beings 200 feet tall existed alongside humans with exactly the same intellectual capacity a man, would it be cool to leech off them? Hey, you don’t need that entire baked elephant; lemme just take a little trunk — we’ll eat well for a week. See what I’m getting at? I don’t really want to root for the sponges of the world. So you’re three inches tall. So what? Does that mean you get to spend your life doing nothing? No wonder your people are dying out.
The Secret of Arrietty is about a small family of small people living in your basement unbeknownst to you. Their ambition in life is to steal everything they need from you without ever being ID’d. That’s it. I know it’s supposed to be clever the way they’ve turned flower pots into fire pits and bottle caps into basins, but I just couldn’t help thinking, “you live the stupidest life I’ve ever heard of.”
As we open, Arrietty is of age now to go steal from the household by herself. What has she been doing for the 14 years before this? Who knows? Her family call themselves Borrowers, but there doesn’t seem to be many left of their kind. 14 years and all you know is your mother and father and not to leave the basement. Did anyone really think this plot through?
On her first trip abroad, we get to see how the family gets around, using exposed nails for steps and spools of thread as elevators. I suppose this is the clever part. Kinda reminded me of The People Under the Stairs. When Arrietty is spotted by the sickly boy, two things happen – the family makes preparations to leave (Borrowers cannot live where humans know they exist) and a forbidden friendship begins between large boy and small girl. I liked the latter story line. The movie focuses on the former. *sigh* and that’s pretty much it.
This is the least Miyazaki of Miyazaki’s films. It lacks for several things I’ve come to understand in Miyazaki’s work — incredible amounts of superfluous footage, fantastic mute characters, abandonment of child and moments of sheer “WTF?” It’s probably because Hayao Miyazaki didn’t actually direct this one. I’ve never been the world’s biggest Miyazaki fan. Far from it. But damn, if this is what happens when he relinquishes the com, please, please don’t do it again.
Rated G, 94 Minutes
D: Hiromasa Yonebayashi
W: Hayao Miyazaki & Keiko Niwa
Genre: Miyazaki
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Little girls who wish to be littler girls
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: People in favor of clever films being clever
