From the Best Children’s Filmmaker You’ve Never Heard Of Comes ‘Ponyo’

By Germain Lussier on July 31st, 2009

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Did you know there’s a new animated movie coming out this month featuring the voices of not only Noah Lindsey Cyrus (Miley’s sister) and Frankie Jonas (the smallest Jonas brother) but also Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Liam Neeson, Cate Blanchett, Cloris Leachman, Betty White and Lily Tomlin?

And what if we told you those people were not the director’s first choice and, in fact, the movie had actually been in theaters since LAST summer?

Well, chances are you’d be very confused with all that information. And rightfully so. The story of “Ponyo” is a unique one.

Walt Disney Pictures will release “Ponyo” in American theaters on August 14. It is the latest film from Hayao Miyazaki, an Oscar-winning Japanese filmmaker whose animated films are regularly held in the same regard as the work of legends like Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, David Lean and Frank Capra. The man is a living, breathing movie legend who only makes family friendly animated films.

Those films, however, are Japanese, so American audiences don’t regularly get to experience them. It was only in the last decade that some of his latest films, such as “Princess Mononoke” and “Spirited Away,” were released in America. And both of those movies are way more mature than Miyazaki’s earlier movies. In the past, he has made movies like “My Neighbor Totoro,” “Castle In the Sky,” and “Kiki’s Delivery Service” which simultaneously speak to kids, with simple, lovely stories, and adults, with the deeper themes.

And all the films are simply gorgeous. Each is still, to this day, hand drawn at Studio Ghibli in Japan. And as the animators get better, the images look more and more like the computer animation they currently compete with.

With “Ponyo,” Miyazaki has gone back to the kid-centric films of his past. The film (released in Japan in July 2008 as “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea“) is about a young fish who hopes to become human. It is inspired by “The Little Mermaid,” but shares very little with the original work or the Disney film of the same name. In Japan, the film was a huge success and opened to rave reviews, which tends to happen with Miyazaki’s films.

The head of Disney Animation, John Lasseter, believes in the films of Hayao Miyazaki so much that he helped bring together the huge wealth of talent named above so that, maybe, American audiences take notice. “Ponyo” won’t be subtitled, it will be in English, and chances are the film is a lock for at least a Best Animated Film (if it qualifies).

If the film opens by you, it is certainly something to take the kids to. It’s rated G and, if they like it, “Ponyo” will open kids up to days of watching brand new films from the master. Check out the trailer below: