Love Blooms Between Fish and Boy in Ponyo

I’ve been a fan of The Little Mermaid since the Disney version hit theaters when I was in second grade, and I’ve heard many accolades directed at Hayao Miyazaki, the man who helmed such critically acclaimed films as Howl’s Moving Castle and Princess Mononoke. Hence, I was very curious about Ponyo, a Japanese re-imagining of the Hans Christian Andersen tale of a mermaid who dreams of becoming human.

I’ve seen foreign films dubbed into English before, but one thing that makes Ponyo different is the fact that so many of the voice actors are familiar, including Liam Neeson, Tina Fey, Cate Blanchett, Cloris Leachman, Lily Tomlin and Betty White. Meanwhile, the children at the heart of the movie are from famous families; Frankie Jonas is brother to the Jonas Brothers, while Noah Lindsey Cyrus is Miley Cyrus’s sister. Having so many well-known voices in the movie was fun, albeit slightly distracting as I tried to figure out which actor was attached to each of the characters.

One identification that never eluded me was Neeson as Fujimoto, Ponyo’s overprotective father who has the force of the ocean at his command. He is similar in many ways to King Triton, his counterpart in the Disney film, but the character I kept thinking of was Bryan Mills, the distraught, dangerous dad in the 2008 thriller Taken. Like Bryan, he goes to extraordinary extremes to retrieve his daughter after she vanishes, causing me to conclude that whether he is in live-action or animated form, you simply do not mess with Liam Neeson’s daughter. In Ponyo, the whole town must pay the price for Ponyo’s disappearance as he subjects them to horrific flooding while he searches for his little fish-girl, even though she clearly is on land of her own volition.

Ponyo bears only the most basic of similarities to The Little Mermaid. The headstrong daughter of an undersea monarch escapes her humdrum underwater existence after befriending a human boy. The main characters are much younger in this instance, so while there is still an element of romantic love at play here, this is not a movie that’s going to end in a wedding. Sosuke and Ponyo are still just small children, so it’s little wonder that Fujimoto is so concerned, though his determination to punish all of humanity, whom he already loathes for their ecological carelessness, is a tad excessive.

The Little Mermaid’s Prince Eric is one of the more interesting of the traditional Disney princes, but he’s still not exactly a fully realized character. In this film, Sosuke is much more fleshed out than the princess. A lively, compassionate little boy, he delights in visiting the elderly ladies at the nursing home near his school and operating the beacon in his lighthouse to signal to his seafaring father that he is on the lookout for him.

When he and Ponyo first meet, she is still a “goldfish” - though she looks like no goldfish I ever saw. She doesn’t even look like a fish. Rather, she is a strange blob with a humanoid face and four appendages that vaguely resemble human limbs. But Sosuke loves her instantly and scoops her up out of the water to claim for his pet. Ponyo doesn’t mind being snatched up; she returns Sosuke’s affection and quickly develops a taste for human food as she snatches some ham from his sandwich. This simple act is an essential component in her later transformation into a little girl of few words who really, really LOVES ham, as she loudly proclaims on several occasions.

There is an environmentalist thread that runs through this film as Miyazaki uses the wild-looking Fujimoto to express discontent with the excesses of humanity and demonstrate how people might come to pay for disregarding ecological matters. But mostly, this is a story of love, pure and simple. Ponyo and Sosuke are as open-hearted as children can be, embracing each other and everyone around them with expansive enthusiasm and kindness. Among the voice actors, intimidating Neeson, harried Fey and affable White make the biggest impression, with Fey having a particularly hefty role as Sosuke’s devoted but frazzled mother.

Ponyo is beautifully animated, though some of the visual elements of the movie are strange indeed, particularly the various sea creatures who aid or hinder Ponyo in her quest. In addition to looking exceedingly odd, Ponyo sounds quite crazed most of the time, causing me to burst out laughing at nearly all of her dialogue. Equally silly is the bouncy end-credits song that starts in immediately after the movie concludes. Meanwhile, my mom was horrified at the erratic driving habits of Sosuke’s mother, which, like several aspects of the movie, are exaggerated to a rather absurd degree. There’s an element of strangeness to the film that makes it hard for me to embrace completely, but for the most part, I found Ponyo to be a fresh and very sweet twist on an old tale.