Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Sight & Sound Challenge: My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Film: My Neighbor Totoro (91/250) 
Critics Poll: 154th 
Directors Poll: 224th 
First Time/Rewatch: First Time

Finally, a Miyazaki film I can get behind! I'm not the biggest Studio Ghibli fan (because I have a cold black heart, I guess) and I'm picky about fantasy and weirdness for weirdness's sake. But I actually enjoyed this one, probably because the fantasy in this film was in small doses. At its heart, this film is about two sisters missing their mom and adjusting to a new home. The fantasy elements are almost cultural, with the girls telling their father that they saw "a totoro" (my sister and I had to look up whether or not this was a "thing" in Japan before the film...it wasn't) and the Catbus was definitely strange but kinda charming (and it has balls!). I can definitely see myself watching this again with my kid. It's about the wide-eyed innocence and imagination of childhood, and I can definitely get behind that. 

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