Ponyo (2008)
★★★½ — Ponyo (2008)
There's a moment in Ponyo where the sea itself seems to breathe, where great rolling waves rise up like living creatures and the whole ocean becomes something ancient and alive. I sat there watching it and thought: no one does this. No one else comes close. Studio Ghibli could animate a puddle and make it feel like a miracle, and this film is basically two hours of proof.
The water animation alone is worth the price of admission. It's some of the most astonishing hand-drawn work I've ever seen, each wave rippling and surging with a weight and personality that would be difficult enough to achieve in live action, let alone on the page. The whole world the film builds has that quality too, vivid and saturated and just slightly off from reality in a way that feels less like fantasy and more like memory. Like the way places look in dreams when you're very young. Pure magic, honestly.
So why only three and a half stars? Because Ponyo sits in a slightly different part of the Ghibli spectrum than I tend to love most. This is a film aimed squarely at children, not in the way that condescends to them, but in the way that isn't especially bothered about bringing adults along for the full ride. The story is simple, almost wilfully so. There's a goldfish who wants to be human, a small boy who loves her, and a lot of very beautiful chaos in between. That's more or less it. Compare that to the labyrinthine emotional depth of Spirited Away or the raw, bruising weight of Princess Mononoke, and you start to feel the difference. I adored My Neighbor Totoro precisely because it managed that trick of being gentle and childlike without ever feeling thin. Ponyo doesn't quite pull that off to the same degree.
That said, I want to be careful not to hold simplicity against a film that wears it honestly. There's no pretence here. Hayao Miyazaki isn't trying to make a grand mythological statement, he's trying to make something warm and strange and full of wonder, and on those terms he largely succeeds. The relationship at the heart of it is genuinely endearing. There's a sweetness to the whole thing that's hard to resist, and I didn't resist it. I smiled a lot. I was charmed. The fever-dream logic of it, where the world floods and nobody seems all that bothered and a small girl runs across the backs of waves with reckless joy, has a kind of freewheeling delight that reminded me of what it felt like to be small and to believe completely in a story.
It also helps that the film is scored beautifully, that the voice performances carry real warmth, and that the pacing moves with confidence even when the plot doesn't give you much to hold onto. Miyazaki trusts the imagery to do the heavy lifting, and mostly it does.
I've spent a lot of time with Ghibli's back catalogue, and if you're working your way through it, Ponyo is absolutely worth your time. It's just that when you've also seen what the studio can do at full stretch, as I touched on in my review of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, a film that finds something genuinely profound inside its fantastical premise, it's hard not to feel a small gap between what this could have been and what it is.
Still, there are worse ways to spend your evening than watching one of the world's great animators pour his heart into something unabashedly joyful. Not top-tier Ghibli, no. But beautiful, heartwarming, and alive in a way that most films simply aren't.
Three and a half stars.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2008 | Watched: 2010-03-03
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Kids · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: HBO Max Amazon Channel · HBO Max
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Hayao Miyazaki: Castle in the Sky (1986) · Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) · Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) · My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
More from Japan: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Blue (1993) · The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
More fantasy: Viy (1967) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
