Great for whole family

This epinion starts years ago, when my husband and I were just dating. He loves Japanese anime, toys, and artwork and collected many items that interested him. He bought the children’s story-book of this movie because he had heard great praise about the movie, but the movie was not available in the States yet. He got to watch a Japanese dub of the movie months later and fell in love with it. As soon as the english dub was available he purchased it.

Not long after we were married my husband introduced me to this movie. We would watch it whenever we had the chance and I fell in love with the movie and the characters -all of them. Hayao Miyazaki wrote a wonderful story and the artwork is breathtaking. The colouring is amazing; sometimes it is difficult to remember that everything is animated. Now let me say, this is not animated film like Disneys movies. There isn’t constant action, there aren’t songs every five minutes. But what it does have is good writing, great characters, and wonderful animation.

The story centers around two sisters, Satsuki and Mei, and their move with their father to a new house to be closer to the hospital their mother is in. The house is 'haunted' with dust bunnies and the girls find the house wonderful the first day in it. But it is a hard time for the girls because their mother is sick in the hospital and they aren't sure when she will come home, if at all.

One day, not long after they move in, Satsuki leaves for school and Mei stays at home with their father, Mei decides to go exploring around the house. She sees a small, strange but cute, little creature and tries to follow it under the house. She can't quite fit and waits for it to come out. When it finally does she chases it into the woods next to the house. There she meets the king Totoro.

She tells her father and her sister about meeting Totoro, who her father tells her is the king of the forest. Her sister also gets to meet Totoro later and they both meet Catbus (basically a giant cat which is a bus). This is the beginning of their adventures with the forest creatures.

I would like to tell the whole story, but it is best when viewed through the eyes of Miyazaki. Be assured that this movie is full of fun,laughter and a few tears. It opens a whole new world for you and your children, and opens your hearts as well.

My daughter (19 months) just HAS to watch this at least every week! She takes the take case and brings it over to me, says "please Mama" goes to her chair sits quietly and waits for it to come on. She watches the whole movie through because it is very entertaining for children as well as adults. Now I can say that at least for us, this is the true test. Not very many movies, that aren’t full of puppets, can hold a child’s attention and the parents not have to worry that they are going to learn bad behaviour from it!

*addition 10/9/00 -Even now at 2 ½ she enjoys the movie just as much, if not more, than when I first wrote this epinion. We had some plush characters what she is just now getting to play with and she creates games like ‘find Mei’. She hides her Mei doll and searches around the house for her saying ‘Mei, Mei, where are you?’. We have a poster in her room of the characters and a favourite past-time at nap-time is to talk to the characters. They have all become her good friends.*

Every other parent we have given this movie to or recommended this movie to has come back and told us how much they and their children love it. Why? Because there is no violence, no bad guy, but there is lots of love and lots of learning. You couldn’t ask for a better family movie.

Other movies by Hayao Miyazaki which have recently been released with english dubs are: Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Princess Mononoke.