The Secret World of Arrietty is an international sensation. Disney has taken the anime movie and kept everything intact on screen, but taken a set of American voice talents who provide the dialogue where once was the Japanese language. Movie Fanatic saw the film on the Disney lot with a vocal cast that brought their A-game.
Bridgit Mendler is the title character, who is a member of a tiny species of people called the Borrowers. Those who read the iconic book series know all too well how compelling their stories can be. Will Arnett steals the movie with his take on Arrietty’s dad, Pod. He is commanding, fatherly and hits the right notes of the concerned father of a teenage girl. Regardless of his half-foot size, Arnett’s Pod is the perfect larger-than-life animated film father figure.
The Borrowers get their name from the fact that they “borrow” items from larger humans’ homes that they will not miss. Items such as a small sugar cube can last them months. The film hints at the fact that Arrietty’s family believes that they are amongst the final of their kind. Whether that is true or not is revealed before the credits roll and leads us to want more Arrietty.
The supporting cast includes Arnett’s real-life wife Amy Poehler as Pod’s wife and mother to Arrietty. Carol Burnett steals scenes as Hara, a house helper who is determined to expose the little people that walk inside the walls of the house where an older couple lives and takes care of their sick, teenage relative Shawn. Once Shawn sees Arrietty, Arnett and Poehler decide they must move as they have been discovered. What they don’t realize is that in Shawn they may have their greatest ally.
The history of the film begins and ends with director Hiromasa Yonebayashi. In the same vein of his Ponyo and Spirited Away, Arrietty’s adventures are always vast in scope — regardless of the cast dynamic or storyline. There is a unifying thread that binds all his films together: The power of animation meets tales that think tall.
Disney has struck a brilliant stroke with the English version of an animated instant classic that treats its canvas as Monet did with vibrant colorful landscapes that are irresistible. When you couple that with a storyline that draws in the viewer from the get-go, The Secret World of Arrietty is another Disney dynamo.
The new anime version of The Borrowers, titled The Secret World of Arrietty by screenwriter and “supervisor” Hayao Miyazaki, has the fascination with household “spirits,” the same lovely color palette and attention to detail for which his films are famous.
But Miyazaki, director of Ponyo, Spirited Away, and My Neighbor Totoro, didn’t direct this Studio Ghibli film. Perhaps that is why it lacks his sense of whimsy, that little sprinkling of Miyazki magic that the Japanese director has given his best work over the decades.
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Mary Norton’s oft-filmed 60-year-old novel is about the miniature people who live in the walls and below the floorboards of old houses, creatures who “borrow” what they need from the “human beans.” Every shopping trip is an expedition — nabbing one cube of sugar, that could last them months, a cracker than can be crushed to make Borrower bread. They live by two rules. “Borrowers take only what they need,” and once they’ve been seen, it’s time to move. Those humans and their curiosity are nothing but trouble for Borrowers.
Arrietty (voiced by Bridgit Mendler of TV’s Good Luck Charlie and Wizards of Waverly Place) is a 13-year-old straining at the limits of her world. She only knows her family, can only hope that there are other Borrowers, still surviving elsewhere. She sneaks outside (Miyazki’s love of nature), tempts the evil ravens who wouldn’t mind gobbling her up as a snack — and is spied by a sickly human boy. Shawn (voiced by David Henrie) wants to help, and Arrietty wants to make contact. She sees no threat from this fellow her own age and no need to move, or even tell her parents (Amy Poehler and Will Arnett). Naturally, they see things differently.
The gorgeous pastels of Studio Ghibli films and famous attention to detail are much in evidence in this Hiromasa Yonebayashi film. The Borrowers’ world of re-purposed human detritus — pins and empty spools and discarded bolts, double sided tape, which allows father Pod (Arnett) to scale the heights of a kitchen counter to fetch sugar — is ingeniously realized.
Carol Burnett voices an old housekeeper who longs for the day when she can catch a real Borrower and be exonerated from those childhood charges that she was “crazy,” one of the film’s many lightly humorous touches. And there are hints of the larger world of Borrowers beyond this garden cottage. Norton wrote more than one book in the series, after all.
But Miyazaki, who co-wrote the script, had nowhere to take it. Either the Borrowers leave, or they stay. They’re either discovered and survive or captured and exposed. There’s no romance, no way to open the tale up, despite the fact that they’re using that most fantastical film form, animation.
So as pretty as it is, this Secret World is too Earthbound by far.
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Movie Info
Directed : Hiromasa Yonebayashi
Produced : Toshio Suzuki
Screenplay : Hayao Miyazaki , Keiko Niwa
Based on : The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Starring : Mirai Shida , Ryunosuke Kamiki , Shinobu Ōtake , Keiko Takeshita , Tatsuya Fujiwara , Tomokazu Miura , Kirin Kiki
Music : Cécile Corbel
Cinematography : Atsushi Okui
Editing : Keiko Kadokawa , Rie Matsubara , Hiromi Sasaki , Takeshi Seyama
Studio : Studio Ghibli
Distributed : Toho (Japan) , Walt Disney Pictures (US) , StudioCanal UK (UK) , Madman Entertainment (AUS, NZ)
Release date : July 17, 2010 (Japan)
Running time : 94 minutes
Country : Japan
Language : Japanese
Budget : ¥2.3 billion(US$23 million)
Box office : US$126,368,084[1]
Star Cast
Mirai Shida
The 18th LISMO drama series has been decided. Titled “Koiiro Waltz,” the show will co-star Mirai Shida (17) and Haruna Kawaguchi (15). Although they belong to the same agency, this is their first time acting together.
Shida has established herself as a talented actress in both television and film, and she recently played the lead voice in Studio Ghibli’s animated film “Karigurashi no Arrietty.” However, she commented that “Koiiro Waltz” was a new experience for her, due to it being a drama for mobile phones. Because of the smaller screen size, there were many times when both actresses had to bring their faces very close together to appear on screen at the same time. As a result, Shida laughingly said she realized just how pretty Kawaguchi’s skin and eyes are.
Shida and Kawaguchi play two high school classmates named Natsu and Aki. As part of their school’s theater club, they perform a play about a love triangle with one of their male classmates, but the love triangle ultimately spills over into their real lives.
“GANTZ” director Shinsuke Sato is directing the drama, consisting of four 5-minute episodes. The drama will begin distribution on the LISMO Channel on November 5, with one episode released every Friday.
Ryunosuke Kamiki
When he was 2 years old, his mother enrolled him in Central Group, a talent agency specialising in representing babies and children, and that was the start of his career in acting.
Shinobu Ōtake
Shinobu Ōtake was born in Shinagawa, Tokyo in 1957. She starred in Go, Shiki-Jitsu, Original Sin and The Borrower Arrietty. She has worked as an actor.Shinobu Ōtake (大竹 しのぶ,Ōtake Shinobu?, born 17 July 1957) is a Japanese actress. She has won three Japanese Academy Awards: the 2000 Best Actress award for Poppoya, and the 1979 awards for both Best Actress (Jiken) and Best Supporting Actress (Seishoku no ishibumi). She also won the award for best actress at the 12th Hochi Film Award for Eien no 1/2. She has received a total of 12 nominations.
Keiko Takeshita
Keiko Takeshita (竹下景子 / TAKESHITA Keiko) is a Japanese actress. She was born Keiko Sekiguchi (関口景子 / SEKIGUCHI Keiko) on September 15, 1953 in Higashi-ku, Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture.
Tatsuya Fujiwara
Tatsuya is one of Japanese actors. Many world-class producers praised his first stage, Ninagawa’s “Shintokumaru” 1997 in London, where he played the title role when he was only 15. The next year, he made a triumphant return to Japan performing “Shintokumaru”. From then on, he has been proving his talent in many Ninagawa’s stages, including “Hamlet” in which he acted the title role at the age of 21. That was the youngest record in Japan’s performance history and he received many performance awards for the performance of “Hamlet”. The NY Times has also acclaimed his performance of “Kindai Nougakushu” in NY. Actively engaging with international producers, he has played Paul Miller’s “A Life In The Theater” and Gregory Doran’s “The Merchant of Venice”. An area of his performances is not limited to stages but also films including Battle Royale (2000 by Kinji Fukasaku) and the Death Note series (2006 by Shusuke Kaneko), both of which are Japanese histric films.
Tomokazu Miura
Tomokazu Miura is a celebrity, a celeb in popular culture. People become celebrities is because of media attention. All around the world, a celebrity may be well-known.
Want to be a celebrity, take these Careers: Singers, Super Models, Actors, Directors, Movie Stars, TV Stars, Show Hosts……………..
Kirin Kiki
Kiki was born in the Kanda area of Tokyo as the daughter of a master of the biwa lute.After graduating from high school, she started her acting career in the early 1960s as a member of the Bungakuza theater troupe using the stage name Chiho Yūki (悠木千帆). She eventually gained fame for performing uniquely comedic and eccentric roles on such television shows as Jikan desu yo and Terauchi Kantarō ikka and in television commercials.She changed her name to “Kirin Kiki” when, after being asked on a television show to auction off something of hers, she ended up selling her first stage name, claiming she had “nothing else to sell.”
While battling various ailments, including a detached retina in 2003 and breast cancer in 2005, Kiki has continued to act and has won several awards, including the best actress Japan Academy Prize for Tokyo Tower: Mom and Me, and Sometimes Dad in 2008, the best supporting actress award from the Yokohama Film Festival for her work in Kamikaze Girls and Half a Confession in 2004, and the best supporting actress Blue Ribbon Award for Still Walking in 2008
