Arrietty - review

10 April 2012

Japan's Studio Ghibli has made some fine animated films and this adaptation of Mary Norton's The Borrowers is well up to its high standard.

It is directed by veteran animator Hiromasa Yonebayashi but written by the great Hayao Miyazaki and is filmed substantially from the point of view of the tiny Borrowers themselves.

They are 10cm tall and are prey to marauding cats and humans.

The sequences where father and young daughter forage for supplies in the house of a human family are beautifully done, but no more so than the detailed countryside backgrounds against which the story is told.

The book is not slavishly followed but the film captures its spirit well as the Borrower daughter is spied by a young man recovering from a heart operation and a mutual fascination results.

Underneath it all, environmental concerns surface, suggesting that anything or anyone unusual is in danger of thoughtless destruction. But young viewers will hardly notice the message as they luxuriate in the glow of the animation.

Arrietty
Cert: U

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