The Secret World of Arrietty

[bluegargantua]

Hey,

So tonight I went to see The Secret World of Arrietty. This is another Disney/Studio Ghibli joint. Which means Studio Ghibli (My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Porco Rosso, and many more) does the jaw-dropping animation and Disney does the world-class dubbing for American audiences.

This particular film is an adaptation of the book The Borrowers (which was essentially ripped off by the cartoon show The Littles if you're old like me). The basic gist is that there are tiny people living in our houses who "borrow" small things like sugar cubes and tissue paper to make their wee existence more comfortable. Arriety is a young Borrower who lives with her mother and father in a pleasant country house. Arriety is bold and adventurous and anxious to go on her first borrowing expedition with her dad (Will Arnett who is basically channeling Batman here).

The problem is that a young boy named Shawn has come to the house to stay with his aunt. He's here because he's sick and will soon be having an operation on his heart so...no excitement.

There is excitement. Much of it provided by the housekeeper Hota (voiced by Carol Burnett) who suspects that Shawn may have seen a little person and who hopes to gain proof of them herself because she's tired of being dismissed as a fool. Adventure follows.

This is a much more relaxed Ghibli film than Spirited Away or Totoro. There's no real magic, just people going about their lives and bumping into one another. It's a placid little film that invites you to sit back and enjoy the visuals. That said, it's a delightful little film that parents and children can easily watch together and neither one feel terribly bored.

So go check it out.

later
Tom

Comments

[muffyjo]

The Borrowers was published in 1952. The Littles was published in 1967. I assure you, if anything was a rip off, the Littles was a rip off of the Borrowers, not the other way around. :) And while I'm showing off my age, when I was little I loved reading the explanation on how Mary Norton came up with them. Seems she was near sighted as a child. As the youngest of the family, her brother(s?) would point at things and say "Hey, look at that bird!" and she'd squint and a moment later, the post she was staring at would separate at the top and fly away. But if they pointed at things in the grass, she could get on her hands and knees and see the ground way up close. And it followed that years later, when she got to be school age, the teachers figured out she needed glasses and the whole world changed. But she never forgot her imaginary people who lived in the world at the perspective of things she could see as a kid.

Meanwhile, thank you. I'm now excited to see this!

[bluegargantua]

I didn't even know the Littles was a book.

I have no idea how faithfully the movie follows the books. My guess is "not very" but I really don't know.

later
Tom

[muffyjo]

Well, there was a movie shot many years ago when I was a kid with Eddie...oh shoot, lost his last name, guy from Green Acres. He played the Arietty's father.

Anyway, so that movie followed the book pretty well if you saw that one.

The book is much better, as always. And there are at least 5 of them that I recall. I had the anthology which is where, in the Intro, is where Mary Norton talks about how she came to imagine the characters.

[coraline]

thank you for looking this up so i didn't have to.

i loved the borrowers :)

[drwex]

Hunh. I'd been sort of eyeing that but seeing the Disney name attached was enough to disinterest me. If it's really a Ghibli film then I'm much more likely to go see it.