I hadnt watched this since I was a little kid. The animation isn't up to the inventive standard offered by Pixar or Disney in recent times - actually, there's something endearingly quaint in the naivety of the drawing - but there's still plenty of ironic and post-modern moments to keep the adults amused, most of them courtesy of the bonkers Cat King and The Baron's fat-cat side-kick Muta, and the central message - be true to who you are and all will work out fine - isn't at all a bad one for impressionable kids to absorb. The Cat Returns - Studio Ghibli Rated PG - MPPA Rating So Last night I finally got around to watching The Cat Returns. Although a couple of shots on the US Disney DVD look.
It is, however, a well-written film that's more enjoyable than many recent animated movies in America. As anyone familiar with Studio Ghibli productions would expect, The Cat Returns is a great looking film. The Cat Returns isn't an epic, and it's not a thrill ride. Some may be letdown that the film isn't more, but I appreciated its solid simplicity. It feels neither too short nor too long, but the appropriate length for an appropriately engaging story.
Once there, however, Mura begins to turn into a cat herself worse, the Cat King is a homicidal maniac.Īn unusually gentle Manga-style animated feature, The Cat Returns is a contemporary update of the Alice in Wonderland story, with just a smidge of The Wizard of Oz thrown in to keep things ticking over. Without the mysticism that Miyazaki prominently explores, The Cat Returns runs a brisk 75 minutes. It’s not as well known as other Ghibli films, such as Princess Mononoke ( see review ) and My Neighbour Totoro ( see review ), and is only the third theatrical feature from that studio not to be directed by studio founders Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata. With the help of The Baron (Elwes) and Muta (Peter Boyle) at the Cat Bureau, Mura makes her way to the Cat Kingdom to sort things out. The Cat Returns is a Japanese animated film from the famed Studio Ghibli.
Unaware that the cat she saves from being run over in traffic is a prince in the Kingdom of Cats, young Japanese schoolgirl Mura (Hathaway) finds herself overwhelmed by a largely useless series of gifts from 'the incredibly magnificent' Cat King (Curry) that culminates in an unrefusable offer of marriage to Prince Lune (Andrew Bevis).