When you decide to watch every Studio Ghibli movie, you start to pick up on some of the broader patterns. For example, the two major directors of the studio each bring something distinct to the table. Hayao Miyazaki directs the kind of movies people think about when they think of Ghibli — striking young heroines, fantastic settings, a sense of wonder. It’s not a huge leap to guess that My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Spirited Away came from the same director, for example.
Isao Takahata, on the other hand, directs more experimental and artistically daring films, to the extent that he doesn’t have two similar films to his name. You could be forgiven for not realizing that Grave of the Fireflies and Pom Poko came from the same studio, let alone the same director. My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999) is yet another departure from his previous three films with the studio, and tells the story — or rather, many short stories — of the Yamada family. These many stories range from just a few minutes to half an hour, but all of them are informed by the film’s newspaper comic strip inspiration. According to Wikipedia, My Neighbors the Yamadas was Studio Ghibli’s first film “to be shot using a 100% digital process,” and the result is striking: it really does look like a comic strip has come to life, including everything from big full-color Sunday splashes to blank-background weekday three-panel gags. Much like the funny papers themselves, the short stories themselves have highs and lows. My Neighbors the Yamadas starts off strong with the adorable young Nonoko introducing her family, followed by a lavishly animated metaphor for family relationships guided by the voice-over of a wedding speech. The digital process shines here, as we see wedding cakes transform smoothly into racetracks and cars morph fluidly into boats and numerous other transformations that I can only assume were made possible by this groundbreaking process. The speech itself is also great, equal parts encouraging and humorous. |
(As an aside, I’d also like to note that, as a then-expecting parent, it was extremely nice to hear that having kids was something to look forward to, actually. If I could outlaw people telling you to “get some sleep while you can,” I would.)
If the wedding speech sequence is My Neighbors the Yamadas at its most beautiful, the following sequence is the film at its most entertaining and relatable. When the Yamadas realize they’ve left little Nonoko at the mall, each member of the family gets a chance to shine, whether it’s the blustering father, hysterical mother, sharp-tongued grandmother, or either of the nonplussed children. Really, it’s Nonoko who steals the scene — her infallible optimism and her determination to help another lost child are instantly endearing, as is her great dialogue (“There’s so many lost grownups today!”). Voice actress Liliana Mumy may not have a lot of big titles under her belt, but she absolutely knocks it out of the park here, which is even more impressive considering that she was only six years old at the time. |
Unfortunately, Nonoko pretty much falls out of the movie after these opening scenes, and it’s a shame. There’s still a lot of humor to be found among the rest of the Yamada family, but the rest of the film is much more hit or miss, largely depending on the strength of the current gag.
The ones that work best tend to be the ones that take advantage of the animation — like a TV remote battle that’s somewhere between a dance and a fight scene, or a confrontation with some bikers that gets a lot of mileage out of a sudden switch in art style. Some of the more traditional funny-papers jokes — including far too many “the dad is lazy and the mom does all the work!” jokes — fall entirely flat. Here, the short story format helps out; if you don’t like the weather, etc. etc. Essentially, what you have is a film that wants to capture the spirit of comic strips, and it does — for everything from revered Calvin and Hobbes strips to groan-worthy Garfield “jokes.”
Up next, the big one: Spirited Away. I actually saw this one in theaters! Stray Notes:
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