Fox transfer |
Disney transfer |
The Film
excerpted from FILM FREAK CENTRAL presents The Films of Hayao Miyazaki by
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| Buy the MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO poster at Moviegoods (click on image) |
The Cheshire Cat recast as a twelve-legged feline bus, the White Rabbit a blue acorn-stealing blob with a little white assistant, and the caterpillar and his mushroom fashioned into the grey, heavy-lidded demeanour (and drum belly) of wood spirit Totoro, Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro recasts Lewis Carroll as something at once more based in functionality and more useful to the developing psyche. An enchantment that suffers only for a mildly dated "blip" score, the film carries the evolving hallmarks of Miyazaki's auteurist questions: little girls displaced by a move or a trauma, surrogate parents, magical modes of transportation, the freedom of flight, and the terror and the exhilaration of the possible. Note one magical scene that encompasses all as nuts planted by young Satsuke (voiced by Noriko Hidaka) and her toddler sister Mei (Chika Sakamoto) grow at the urging of a midnight dance while their father (Shigesato Itoi) toils in his study, oblivious. Too short at 85 minutes, My Neighbor Totoro is a wondrous picture by an artist hitting his prime as an animator and fable-maker--a dry run in many ways for the master's late work (see the soot spirits resurrected in Spirited Away, the crone Granny (Tanie Kitabayashi) in one of the airplane workers in Porco Rosso, and the old hermit of Princess Mononoke), My Neighbor Totoro on its own is one of the most accomplished and important children's films ever made. |
The DVD
Next to Fox's muddy pan-and-scan DVD release from 2002, Disney's 2-disc set of My Neighbor Totoro is a revelation, but still it leaves room for improvement. For starters, the source print's abundant grain falls victim to edge-enhancement, resulting in something rather like screen-door artifacting. Colours are under the constant threat of oversaturation, and owners of 16x9 displays without overscan will lose precious real estate to the windowboxing of this 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation. If pressed, I'd have to say that this is the worst-looking Ghibli/Disney transfer since Castle in the Sky, though it's nonetheless the best thing to happen to My Neighbour Totoro on these shores in a long, long time. A new English dub in Dolby 2.0 stereo joins the original Japanese audio, also in Dolby 2.0 stereo; the English track sounds technically superior (i.e. less brittle), but given my steadily weakening tolerance for Dakota Fanning, I only sampled it. This, of course, didn't let me off the hook, as Fanning and her diminutive sister Elle dominate the obligatory "Behind the Microphone" featurette (6 mins.), squeezing each other after every line-reading like twin Tamagotchis programmed for sisterly affection. The opening and ending title sequences sans text, a dupey-looking trailer for My Neighbor Totoro, and trailers for Disney's other Ghibli DVDs, The Little Mermaid, Cars, Chicken Little, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Airbuddies round out the first platter. Disc 2 contains one of those inexplicable storyboard versions of the film (seriously, who watches these?), with the same language options as the feature proper.-
© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.
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DVD GRADES:
Image B
Sound B
Extras C |
DVD VITALS:
Running Time
86 minutes
MPAA
G
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.85:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English Stereo,
Japanese Stereo,
French Stereo
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English
2 DVD-9s
Region One
Disney
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Published: March 21, 2006
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