Cursed by the jealous Witch of the Waste (Lauren Bacall), Sophie (Emily Mortimer) is aged to an old crone (Jean Simmons). With limited options, she travels to the wastes, and is picked up by the giant walking “castle” of the dashing wizard, Howl (Christian Bale), who is said to have no heart. Accepting her new age, Sophie becomes the castle’s cleaning woman. A war with a nearby kingdom and a summons for all wizards to come to the King’s palace sets Sophie, Howl, and Calcifer (Billy Crystal), a fire demon who supplies the energy for the castle, off on adventures that will call into question who the enemy is.
Nice. Sweet. Cute.
How much you like Howl’s Moving Castle will depend on how much you like to say those three words with regard to your entertainment. If you are looking for meaning or clever commentary on society, this isn’t the place. What you’ll see is a big, bright whirlpool of an adventure that sweeps around with gusto and eventually vanishes without a ripple left behind. While it’s twisting, you’ll see a pleasant girl displays basket-loads of spunk, an adorable small dog who can’t climb stairs, and a hopping scarecrow with tons of moxie.
Oh, add “spunk,” “adorable,” and “moxie” to that list of words. Yes, this is a nice, sweet, cute, spunky, adorable film with lots of moxie.
Director Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) is not one to worry about consistency, logic, or character continuity. In his films, things happen because they are cool. There are few rules and whatever they might be, the audience is kept ignorant. Is a situation dangerous or easy to escape from? Is what is happening an everyday occurrence or is it unusual? Who knows. I doubt Miyazaki even thinks about that. His projects are often described as having the logic of dreams. I’d call it the stream of consciousness of a very excited child. The pieces of the world don’t always hang together. Instead, Miyazaki stacks odd creature on strange event on bizarre background, almost randomly, and then repeats. Sure, there’s imagination at work, but at a very simple level where anything can be tossed in simply because no one is stopping it from happening. Howl’s Moving Castle is a close cousin to his other works, and as such, has a plot that is best described by your breathless nephew after you’ve overdosed him on speed and had him run around the font yard. I’ll start him off:
“Then the blobby men come and Sophie and Howl fly through the air and then he’s gone and the witch comes and she’s mean and makes her old and she cries and runs off and a scarecrow hops around on his stick and a castle with bird legs and chimneys all over walks by and a boy answers the door with a fake beard and the fire can talk and is unhappy and soldiers come to the door and then other soldiers come to the same door but its a different door now and…” (breath)
While normal storytelling devices are thrown out the window, and the whole is hard to connect with, there are many nice moments. These often involve sight-gags (the before-mentioned hoping scarecrow helping with the laundry, two old ladies trying to climb more steps than you can count) or comic one-liners (Calcifer screaming he’s going to be extinguished, Howl telling Sophie not to abuse his fire demon). It’s all pretty amusing in a low-attention-span way.
As this is a children’s movie, based on a British kid’s book by Diana Wynne Jones, there are moral lessons in abundance, but nothing ever backs them up. We learn that war is bad, because it is. Vanity is problematic, again, because it is. The closest thing to a complete message is that growing up is hard and you have to stand up for what is right, but even there the points are hardly conclusive. Don’t strain too much with the themes; you’ll only hurt yourself.
For anime, the hand drawn cells that make up the movie are very complex and reasonably attractive, as longs as you have a great deal of tolerance for pastels. The frame is bursting with items of no story importance; they are there to lend atmosphere and serve that function well. The characters are detailed enough to easily make out their current emotions, and the intricate design of the walking castle must have sent several animators off to rest homes to recover from exhaustion. Children brought up on Disney classics may find it lacking, but the effect should be satisfying for most.
Miyazaki’s recent films have benefited from first class dubbing (purists will complain that there is anything other than the original Japanese, because that’s what purists do). Dubbing might be able to discard its bad reputation with a few more successes like this and Princess Mononoke. Real actors make the difference. Christian Bale’s deep tones for Howl are a break from the tendency of cheap distribution houses to give a weak, high-pitched, squeaking voice to the standard effeminate anime hero. Bale makes him sound like a man, which is a great help in taking him seriously. Bacall, Simmons, Mortimer, and Blythe Danner as the scheming King’s sorceress, all lend the film a level of class, supplying the proper emotions for the dialog. And Crystal, who keeps his tendency to float from comedic into silly in check, is funny and fitting as the demon.
Howl’s Moving Castle is best described as whimsical, and should be enjoyable as long as you don’t invite your “hip” friends over. It is a children’s film that has plenty to entertain adults, but it is still a children’s film.