Movie Review: Mary & the Witch's Flower
Overall: 7/10 (-2 points if you're salty about Studio Ghibli dissolving & think Studio Ponco is riding their coattails) 
Summary: Mary Smith comes across a magic flower that gives her witch powers for a single night while staying at her great aunt's house one summer. Based on the novel 'The Little Broomstick' by Mary Stewart.
Story: The story is very straightforward and according to those who read the book is very faithful to the source material. There's not much to it, girl encounters magic, magic causes trouble, girl saves the day, but it's competently done. The pacing was decent and the reveals well timed. Ten more minutes probably would have made the movie jump from a B movie to an A movie, but on the other hand it doesn't drag like the lesser liked Ghibli movies.
Characters: 4/10 Fairly shallow, but that's largely due to the source material being a very short novel that's mainly meant to just be an entertaining children's fantasy adventure. Mary and the male lead, Peter, have an annoying "they hate each other at the beginning therefore you should ship them by the end" thing going on and I really don't know if that's in the book or not. I liked the character designs for the villains which can only be described as Anime!Umbridge and Remix!Dr. Eggman. Great Aunt Charlotte is the Grandmother for Arietty in every sense, but that's also a source material problem.
Queer Quotient: 1/10, see the above trope concerning Mary and Peter. I guess you could assume Great Aunt Charlotte is anything from ace to wlw queer since she's a spinster with no hint of a male love interest in her past.
Visuals & Cinematography: 6/10, the ultimate mixed bag. There are some gorgeous set pieces and props, but the storyboarding was all over the place. There were some epic shots and great framing and then you'd get a string of TV style shots that killed the movie's sense of scope. I think it'll probably be less noticeable on home video, but on the big screen it was like 'Why are we suddenly in an episode of a Saturday morning cartoon?' The lighting was also all over the place. Indoor scenes had meticulous attention to shadow, to the point of distracting, while outdoor scenes were a hodgepodge of really well done or really cheaply done with zero shadows or sense of light source. The credits give it away as Ponco had a lot of help from TV anime studios and it shows in the worst way possible. Children and people who aren't animation fans are unlikely to notice, but die-hard animation fans will probably cringe quite a bit.
Good For: People who like stories about magic and witches, people who enjoy children's animated movies.
Not Good For: Ghibli fans expecting a return to peak Ghibli movie making.
Other Notes: A lot of criticism about this movie is that it's a rehash of Arietty. Which isn't surprising because it's by the same director (Hiromasa Yonebayashi) and the source novels are mid-century British children's books. I personally enjoyed this movie overall better than Arietty, though Arietty is the more technically competent movie it dragged terribly for me.
This is definitely more of a children's movie rather than an all ages movie so it doesn't hold up as well as Yonebayashi's When Marie Was There, but it has some charm that make it worth a watch. Think more on the level of Ponyo or Totoro rather than Spirited Away or Mononoke.
The magical school Mary visits is inventive and interesting, it really made me wish once more that the Harry Potter films had been animated rather than live action. Sadly due to the plot we don't get to see much more than the barest glimpse of the school's day-to-day wonders and return trips to the location are devoid of activity and life (again for plot reasons). Guess I better start watching Little Witch Academia!
Summary: Mary Smith comes across a magic flower that gives her witch powers for a single night while staying at her great aunt's house one summer. Based on the novel 'The Little Broomstick' by Mary Stewart.
Story: The story is very straightforward and according to those who read the book is very faithful to the source material. There's not much to it, girl encounters magic, magic causes trouble, girl saves the day, but it's competently done. The pacing was decent and the reveals well timed. Ten more minutes probably would have made the movie jump from a B movie to an A movie, but on the other hand it doesn't drag like the lesser liked Ghibli movies.
Characters: 4/10 Fairly shallow, but that's largely due to the source material being a very short novel that's mainly meant to just be an entertaining children's fantasy adventure. Mary and the male lead, Peter, have an annoying "they hate each other at the beginning therefore you should ship them by the end" thing going on and I really don't know if that's in the book or not. I liked the character designs for the villains which can only be described as Anime!Umbridge and Remix!Dr. Eggman. Great Aunt Charlotte is the Grandmother for Arietty in every sense, but that's also a source material problem.
Queer Quotient: 1/10, see the above trope concerning Mary and Peter. I guess you could assume Great Aunt Charlotte is anything from ace to wlw queer since she's a spinster with no hint of a male love interest in her past.
Visuals & Cinematography: 6/10, the ultimate mixed bag. There are some gorgeous set pieces and props, but the storyboarding was all over the place. There were some epic shots and great framing and then you'd get a string of TV style shots that killed the movie's sense of scope. I think it'll probably be less noticeable on home video, but on the big screen it was like 'Why are we suddenly in an episode of a Saturday morning cartoon?' The lighting was also all over the place. Indoor scenes had meticulous attention to shadow, to the point of distracting, while outdoor scenes were a hodgepodge of really well done or really cheaply done with zero shadows or sense of light source. The credits give it away as Ponco had a lot of help from TV anime studios and it shows in the worst way possible. Children and people who aren't animation fans are unlikely to notice, but die-hard animation fans will probably cringe quite a bit.
Good For: People who like stories about magic and witches, people who enjoy children's animated movies.
Not Good For: Ghibli fans expecting a return to peak Ghibli movie making.
Other Notes: A lot of criticism about this movie is that it's a rehash of Arietty. Which isn't surprising because it's by the same director (Hiromasa Yonebayashi) and the source novels are mid-century British children's books. I personally enjoyed this movie overall better than Arietty, though Arietty is the more technically competent movie it dragged terribly for me.
This is definitely more of a children's movie rather than an all ages movie so it doesn't hold up as well as Yonebayashi's When Marie Was There, but it has some charm that make it worth a watch. Think more on the level of Ponyo or Totoro rather than Spirited Away or Mononoke.
The magical school Mary visits is inventive and interesting, it really made me wish once more that the Harry Potter films had been animated rather than live action. Sadly due to the plot we don't get to see much more than the barest glimpse of the school's day-to-day wonders and return trips to the location are devoid of activity and life (again for plot reasons). Guess I better start watching Little Witch Academia!