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Castle in the Sky Director: Hayao Miyazaki Number of Items: 2 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Format: Animated, Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby Audience Rating: Unrated Running Time: 125 minutes Studio: Walt Disney Home Video Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Region Code: 1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2003-04-15 Buy from Amazon |
 "Creative Animation Masterpiece"Injections of new ideas and thoughts are typically a good thing. In the case of "Castle in the Sky," the 1986 Hiyao Miyazaki film, the approach to animation is a great thing. The world created by Miyazaki is surrealistic and futuristic. The landscapes are immense and provide an other world feel though the flora and fauna are that of Earth. While the central characters are very young, the theme and story rival some of the best science fiction and fantasy live action movies produced in The United States. Animation provides a media that allows limitless creation bounded only by the imagination of the artist. Sheeta, voiced by Anna Paquin, is being chased by a variety of people, including what appear to be government types, the military, and pirates. At first it's difficult to understand who is a good guy and who is a bad guy, which mirrors Sheeta's own confusion in separating the two. Sheeta soon meets up with Pazu (voiced by James Van Der Beek) who dreams of visiting far off lands. When Pazu discovers that Sheeta has a connection to the mythical floating castle Laputa Pazu resolves to help Sheeta, though he has yet to discover where assisting Sheeta might take him. Sheeta finds herself continually chased throughout the film by various persons with different agendas. Most are after the treasure of Laputa, but some are after power. Sheeta herself is just the girl next door who also happens to be a princess and whose only goal is to grow up without people chasing her around. Along the way she demonstrates her love for nature and the desire to protect beautiful things. What is amazing in this film is the technology. There are a host of flying machines that reminded me of Jules Verne's "Master of the World." The castle itself is a technological marvel of an advanced civilization with its own set of interesting features. Military armament is sophisticated and powerful, and yet can appear graceful. Contrasting with the advanced technology is the wide-spread use of steam power and the relatively lower technology evident for civilians. The characters are often over the top, and include Cloris Leachman, Mandy Patinkin and Mark Hamill. While they are often caricatures, the combination of humor and seriousness tends to be a trait of Japanese animation. This movie is generally suitable for most of the family, but the violence at some points may be unsuitable for the pre-school members of the family. If you enjoy creativity in your animation, and enjoy a story with a bit of science fiction and fantasy, kick back with a bowl of popcorn and enjoy this one. "A Feel-Good Movie of Great Humor, Wit and Adventure"Castle in the Sky was conceived, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese anime genius responsible for Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, among others. It tells the story of Sheeta, an orphan whose grandmother has gifted her with a pendant that is a relic of the legendary floating city of Laputa (the Castle in the Sky of the title). Sheeta is kidnapped by evil government agents who want to use her and the pendant to find Laputa and loot its technological secrets. When the Dora Pirate Gang, consisting of the matriarchal Dora and her band of daring but not terribly bright sons, raid the military transport carrying Sheeta and her captors because they want the pendant for themselves, Sheeta falls off the transport, from immense height....and right into the arms of Pazu, a resourceful boy of her own age. Pazu lives in a mining town, as assistant to an engineer. He spends his days working to keep the machinery of the mine running. After many adventures and near escapes, from both the government/military and the pirates, Sheeta and Pazu decide to join the Dora Pirate Gang (who are really not such bad folks after all). There are so many things to like about this movie. Sheeta and Pazu are both plucky and determined, a true young heroine and hero. They're living examples of the old saying, "If you're handed lemons, make lemonade." They take turns of fate that would have most people fuming and whining in stride and, through their innate decency, somehow magically turn them around into positive experiences. As just one example, when they join the pirates, Pazu is put to work maintaining their flying ship's engine room; Sheeta is shown a filthy, degenerate kitchen and told this is now her domain, it's up to her to produce five meals a day for the pirates. These both hardly sound like appealing fates. But Pazu thinks the engine room is really cool, he loves machinery, and immediately pitches in with such real enthusiasm and skill he soon earns the respect and liking of the ship's irascible chief engineer. Sheeta so charms the male pirates with her beauty, grace and sweet personality that these rough hewn, dangerous men fall all over themselves to help her, and soon her kitchen is full of pirates peeling potatos, cleaning pots, etc. Not only does this make her job much easier, but everyone's having a great time. The artwork and animation throughout this movie are both uniformly excellent. The best of many thrilling scenes, in my opinion, occurs when Pazu, who makes Young Indiana Jones look like a wimp, along with Sheeta as passenger, pilots a kite through an electrically charged hurricane. The sight of Pazu's face, wearing flying goggles almost bigger than he is, features illuminated by lightning bolts, his expression of mingled determination and wonder, is one of the most arresting images I've even seen in any medium. I would describe this movie as "a great viewing experience for the entire family" were it not for the fact there's stuff in here that might be a bit rough for some younger children. There are several scenes of Sheeta and Pazu being hit by much larger adults, so hard it results in unconsciousness at times. And although we never see anyone die on-screen, there are many instances of people caught in explosions, or falling from such a height it's obvious, whether we actually see it or not, people really are dying here, violently. For all that, Castle in the Sky is a great viewing experience, not just one of the best pieces of animation you could ever see, but one of the best movies, period. I give this film my highest recommendation. If you watch it, you will love it. "Superb Movie"It is pretty good and entertaining probably one of the best from disney.... but at least Hayao Miyazaki made the movie cause with a genius like that then disney has a hit movie yet again! "This movie is touching with tons of action!"This movie was one of the best movies ever! I recently purchased this movie and wow! it was amazing! I didn't think for a second that military and all this action was going to come out of this movie. The robot scene was spectacular. Miyazaki did a really great job. The music is soothing and the movie just..blew me away. The movie is about a girl who has a crystal with special powers she meets a boy (cant remember names) and he catches her and they together set off with air pirates to find the castle in the sky. Then the military and goostaff both follow and attack the castle. It's very nice and was an excellent movie.  "Early masterpiece from Miyazaki"Hayao Miyazaki's second feature film, and his first one to be widely acclaimed both commercially and critically (though his debut - Nausicaa AKA Warriors of the Wind is considered by many fans his best), 'Tenku no Shiro Rapyuta' AKA 'Castle in the Sky' may seem childish and simplistic when compared to his more recent masterpieces like 'Kiki's Delivery Service', 'Mononoke-hime' and 'Spirited Away', but in 1986 it was years ahead of its time and it was one of the milestones of modern anime. It's important to remember that 'Castle in the Sky' was made two years before the revolutionary 'Akira', and while it's not provocative and controversial like the aforementioned masterpiece, the lead characters are all mainly basic manga hero / heroine / villain type characters, and the story is quite predictable and obvious (at least in today's standards), Miyazaki's designs and animation work are of standards never seen before. While the story and humor are a bit silly and outdated at times, the movie is still very entertaining and very enjoyable - if not as breathtaking as 'Spirited Away'. And if you'll allow yourself to see the beauty of the frames themselves and ignore the low-budget coloring and animation and the identical twin faces - at this point Miyazaki is still faithful to his roots and to the agreed standards of Japanese cartooning - you'll see Miyazaki's genius shine through as well as it does on 'Spirited Away' and Mononoke. While 'Castle in the Sky', being a sci-fi adventure and very suitable for children, fits in more neatly with classic anime than anything else he had done since, his motifs and principles still show and play an important part. To say much more would be to ruin the movie, so I'll kindly shut up. Suffice to say that I'm giving it only four stars because if I gave it five I couldn't go any higher for 'Spirited Away' and 'Princess Mononoke'. And that would be a crime. As in most anime movies, I recommend watching the Japanese version with the English subtitles, even if you don't speak a word of Japanese - the English overdubs just don't tend to be very good, and in this case it's just horrendous. You might want to watch it in the English version once, though, just for the laughs, and for the star-filled cast (the English dub was only recorded following the success of 'Spirited Away', as it was for 'Kiki's Delivery Service') - Anna Paquin and James Van Der Beek (Yeah, the Dawson guy!) fill the lead roles, Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker from 'Star Wars', in case you don't know!) plays the villain, and other roles are filled by Andy Dick, Tres MacNeille (The Simpsons, Rugrats, Animaniacs...), Michael McShane (Friar Tuck from Kevin Costner's Robin Hood travesty) and Mandy Patinkin (Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya...) Good for a laugh, or a few laughs really. But watch the Japanese one first. |
