Wednesday, January 2, 2008

My Neighbor Totoro

Since I'm wading through a wonderful but very dense novel about Macbeth, set in the 11th century, I thought it might be a good time to add a post about a non-book thing. The spawn asked me if they could watch My Neighbor Totoro today. I can't say enough great things about this movie. If you have little kids and you allow them to watch TV, it's a constant struggle to find movies that aren't too upsetting but aren't sickly sweet either.

The two main characters are sisters about 8 and 4 yrs old. They are both what my Mom called 'pistols' exploring the world around them with little fear. Pretty much every character in the movie is, at first glance, a little frightening, and then with time is revealed to be benevolent. So the movie doesn't have to be disgusting like My Little Ponies, or truly threatening like Disney. (The sick mom actually gets better, can you imagine!)

The animation is beautiful with typical anime human characters somewhere between western features and asian features. This director has many other movies out there but I'm waiting until my kids are a bit older before we move on to Spirited Away. If you have kids under 5 in the house, I highly recommend My Neighbor Totoro.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

As you know, we love love love this movie in our household. If you haven't checked out "Kiki's Delivery Service," definitely do so.

Did you ever end up buying a stuffed Totoro doll for your kids?

Heloise said...

We borrowed Kiki's Delivery Service from a neighbor for ten or twenty viewings. I didn't love it as much as Totoro but Ceci did, and it was definitely age appropriate. I'm excited about Howl's Castle and so on, just think we should be a bit older.

After watching Totoro again yesterday, I soo need to get the toy, for me if not for them. I never pulled the trigger last time I looked. :)

Stewart said...

Totoro is great and all, but what all your readers would really like to see is an in-depth review of "Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper".

Heloise said...

Er um, yeah. Yeah, I'll get right on that.