I mentioned a little while ago that I rented a bunch of Miyazaki Hayao’s animated movies at one time. Howl’s Moving Castle, his 2004 release, was among the films that I saw at the time. I went on vacation shortly after the viewing, so haven’t been able to write up a review of the movie until now. Here’s what I thought of it.
Howl’s Moving Castle tells the story of a young woman named Sophie (voiced by Emily Mortimer) who has been living a simple life as a hatmaker. Then one day she gets harrassed in the streets by a few unruly soldiers, but is saved by a mysterious stranger who happens to wander along. The stranger acts a bit shifty and we can soon see why: he’s apparently trying to hide out from big black globs of… I don’t know what… that are chasing him. Sophie and the stranger part ways and Sophie goes back to her shop.
Later that night, a customer tries to enter the shop after closing time. It turns out to be the Witch of the Waste (Lauren Bacall), who, for a reason that will become clear later, casts a spell on Sophie, changing her into a very old woman. Old Sophie (now voiced by Jean Simmons) doesn’t want anyone from the town to see her in this condition, so she decides to leave.
As Sophie is walking along by herself, she meets up with a scarecrow that leads her to a strange contraption that looks like it might fall apart at any second. It’s Howl’s moving castle, and we soon learn that the wizard who lends his name to the castle is the very same stranger that saved Sophie in the earlier encounter.
Once Sophie is inside the castle, she gets a glimpse of Howl’s unique world. She meets Markl (Josh Hutcherson), a young boy who has apprenticed himself to Howl, as well as Calcifer (Billy Crystal), the fire that provides the power to keep the castle moving.
Sophie joins Howl’s household as a cleaning lady, and the rest of the movie then deals with two separate plots: Howl’s involvement in both sides of a war between two kingdoms and Sophie’s quest to get the witch to transform her back into her younger self.
My Reaction: I had high expectations for Howl’s Moving Castle both because of Miyazaki’s attachment to the project and because the movie received pretty good ratings across the board. However, I have to admit that I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I thought I would.
On the one hand, Sophie’s storyline was more interesting to me than Howl’s, and yet, it was pretty boring to watch this bent old woman trying to talk a witch into giving her youth back to her. Of course, the Howl/Sophie romantic subplot had to come up, but that was largely on the backburner because Sophie was an old woman for most of the film.
On the other hand, Howl’s story might have been more interesting to me if I had understood it. I wasn’t really paying attention to the politics of that plot so I had no idea why Howl was caught in the middle between the two warring nations. I think it would have made for a tighter film to leave that part out and give Howl’s character a different motivation altogether — but that’s just me.
Overall, the movie was visually appealing as usual, but the plot wasn’t as compelling as I would have liked. As a result, I give Howl’s Moving Castle 6.5 stars out of 10. There are far better Miyazaki films out there, so I recommend watching something else.