{"id":170668,"date":"2021-02-04T18:00:51","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T15:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/a-flat-shadow-of-studio-ghibli-film\/"},"modified":"2021-02-04T18:00:51","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T15:00:51","slug":"a-flat-shadow-of-studio-ghibli-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/a-flat-shadow-of-studio-ghibli-film\/","title":{"rendered":"#A Flat Shadow of Studio Ghibli \u2013 \/Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#A Flat Shadow of Studio Ghibli \u2013 \/Film<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

\"earwig<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a lot of trepidation heading into Studio Ghibli\u2019s Earwig and the Witch<\/em><\/strong>. It is the studio\u2019s first foray into CG animation, a technology<\/a> it had used sparingly for high-octane action sequences in Spirited Away <\/em>and Princess Miyazaki<\/em> or for the clattering steampunk castle of Howl\u2019s Moving Castle<\/em>, but never to this extent and never for a feature film. And that trepidation only grew with subsequent trailers for Earwig and the Witch<\/em> showing the film\u2019s oddly stiff character animation and flat, untextured surfaces. It looked like an unfinished 3D-animated imitation of Ghibli\u2019s classic warm, genial art style \u2014 a style that has mostly been instructed by the animation style of Hayao Miyazaki \u2014 but missing the soulfulness that typically characterizes the studio\u2019s films.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a criticism that Earwig and the Witch<\/em> director Goro Miyazaki<\/strong> probably isn\u2019t unfamiliar with. His debut feature Tales From Earthsea<\/em>\u00a0boasted visually stunning backgrounds \u2014 a product of the director\u2019s background in architecture \u2014 but blank, empty characters and a dull narrative that felt like a pale imitation of the best of Ghibli. His second film From Up on Poppy Hill <\/em>was a promising improvement (perhaps aided by his father Hayao Miyazaki\u2019s unasked-for intervention, as chronicled in the NHK docuseries<\/a> 10 Years With Hayao Miyazaki<\/em>), so Earwig and the Witch<\/em> had the potential to be even better \u2014 a chance for Goro to step out of his famous father\u2019s shadow and establish his own visual style and creative identity. Sadly, left to his own devices, Goro falls short.
\nEarwig and the Witch<\/em> looks and feels like a made-for-TV CG-animated movie \u2014 and in fairness, it kind of is. A co-production between Studio Ghibli and the Japanese broadcasting company NHK, Earwig and the Witch<\/em> premiered in Japan on NHK General<\/a> TV in December 2020, likely to a smaller audience and lower expectations than will be met with its U.S. premiere, which marks the first Ghibli film in five years. Maybe you can blame those lower TV-quality standards, or maybe point the finger at its production process \u2014 in which a whole new team was brought in to craft the 3D animation \u2014 or perhaps just chalk it up to a director who still hasn\u2019t found his own creative identity yet. But regardless, Earwig and the Witch<\/em> is a disapp<\/a>ointing hour and a half of plot set-up that feels like it ends before it begins.<\/p>\n

Based on the children\u2019s book by Diana Wynne Jones (whose work Ghibli had adapted before with Howl\u2019s Moving Castle<\/em>), Earwig and the Witch<\/em> follows the spunky orphan girl Earwig, who was dropped on the steps of an orphanage by a mysterious woman as a baby. Now 10 years old, Earwig (Taylor Paige Henderson<\/strong>) has learned how to rule the orphanage, bullying her fellow orphans into submission while playing coy and innocent for the matrons. But Earwig\u2019s comfortable existence is cut short with the appearance of Bella Yaga (Vanessa Marshall<\/strong>), a stern witch who adopts Earwig and brings her to her home to serve as the assistant for her and the intimidating Mandrake (Richard E. Grant<\/strong>). Earwig is at first perturbed by her new living arrangement until she realizes that she can get something out of it: she\u2019ll strike a deal with Bella Yaga to teach her to become a witch. But Bella Yaga rules with an iron thumb, forcing Earwig to do mundane tasks like grinding up rat bones and cleaning the filthy potion-soaked floors. But even Bella Yaga tiptoes around Mandrake, who is liable to be go off on a demonic rage if he isn\u2019t served his favorite dishes. Unhappy with this tedious existence, Earwig forms an alliance with Thomas (Dan Stevens<\/strong>), the beleaguered cat familiar of Bella Yaga, to teach Bella Yaga a lesson.<\/p>\n

Earwig and the Witch<\/em> is an incredibly low-stakes fantasy comedy, though that\u2019s fairly par for the course for a Ghibli movie. In fact, some of the best films of the animation studio are the ones where nothing much happens until the plot kicks in at the last 10 minutes, letting us live with, and enjoy the company of, a group of characters and their rich, awe-inspiring worlds. Except with Earwig and the Witch<\/em>, there\u2019s not much to enjoy. The characters feel half-baked at best, the most interesting being Bella Yaga and Mandrake, whose individual character traits beyond \u201ctough and scary\u201d don\u2019t start to surface until well into the third act. We\u2019re stuck inside the house with Earwig for the majority of the film, left to break up the monotony with some magical hijinks that earn a few chuckles at best. The question of Earwig\u2019s parentage, lightly teased at the beginning of the film, isn\u2019t even brought up until the very (and I mean very<\/em>) end. And Earwig may be the film\u2019s most glaring flaw: a snot-nosed brat stays as much a brat through the film. Ghibli movies aren\u2019t without their unlikable protagonists \u2014 in fact, those are often their most interesting \u2014 but it\u2019s the existence of an arc that lends them weight, and complexity, and soul. Earwig goes through no such arc, instead attempting to use the same tactics that made her the ruler of her orphanage on her new guardians, and meeting not much resistance.<\/p>\n

The issue with Earwig and the Witch<\/em> is that it feels like an 82-minute build-up to the story. It suffers from the \u201corigin story\u201d approach that far too many shows and movies have taken to, and it\u2019s not a very interesting origin story at that, though it does show moments of promise \u2014 one particularly trip<\/a>py scene when the Mandrake\u2019s powers are unleashed comes to mind. Earwig and the Witch<\/em> feels like a film going through the motions, but not understanding the emotion behind the big narrative beats it\u2019s trying to pull off. It\u2019s a film matched by its flat animation style: incomplete and uninspired.<\/p>\n

\/Film Rating: 5 out of 10<\/strong>
\n<\/p>\n

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“#A Flat Shadow of Studio Ghibli \u2013 \/Film” There\u2019s been a lot of trepidation heading into Studio Ghibli\u2019s Earwig and the Witch. It is the studio\u2019s first foray into CG animation, a technology it had used sparingly for high-octane action sequences in Spirited Away and Princess Miyazaki or for the clattering steampunk castle of Howl\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":170669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/d13ezvd6yrslxm.cloudfront.net\/wp\/wp-content\/images\/earwig-and-the-witch-2-e1612333054823.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1568,2970,35109,4604,9652,1570,2086,7598,24695,24697],"class_list":["post-170668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-featured-stories-sidebar","tag-anime","tag-earwig-and-the-witch","tag-family-films","tag-fantasy","tag-features","tag-goro-miyazaki","tag-movie-reviews","tag-studio-ghibi","tag-studio-ghibli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}