The Borrower's Arriety

Waktu edar : July 17, 2010

Waktu menonton : October 2011
Hal paling berkesan : The beyond gorgeous 2D animations. It's like looking at a gorgeous picture.

When I was in junior high, I watched a movie called The Borrowers. It's a typical slapstick comedy movie, with a dumb villain and slapstick humor. But I loved that movie because of the premise. Below our house, there's a family of Borrowers, little people that live like us, had a tiny home under our house and borrow our stuff. It's cute and I love it. Thinking back, it's not a very great movie, but tell that to a 10-year-old me.

The Borrowers is actually based on a novel with the same name, and Studio Ghibli tried to make their own animated version of it. And strangely, it's very different even though the premise is the same.

A family of Borrowers, little people that lives by borrowing stuff from a house, lives under a house of an old lady and her maid. They have been living there a long time, with three families at first, but now it's just them. Every other families either moved away or disappeared. Arriety, the daughter in the family, is 14 and preparing for her first borrowing. But a young boy came to stay at the house, the nephew of the old lady. And the young boy, Sho, accidentally saw Arriety in the garden when he first arrived. When Sho saw Arriety again accidentally on her first borrowing, the whole family consider moving away.

This is a movie where nothing ever really happens. The story progress very little from the summary I have just described. There's a feeling of peace and quiet throughout the whole movie, like the feeling you get when you stayed at a quiet country house. Ghibli's movies tend to do that, even more for their animated drama ones, like Ocean Waves, but even for their fantasy one, like My Name is Totoro and Ponyo.

The plus side is it's really peaceful to watch. The animation is as gorgeous as ever. When you watch a Ghibli movie, you'll be reminded of how much more gorgeous animation is when it's hand drawned like this, compared to a 3D one. The feeling of being in a peaceful country house surrounded by flowers is very evident throughout the movie.

Sadly, that means that nothing ever really happens in this movie. There's very little plot development here. I was expecting some thrilling chase through the city, where everything is big and some fantastic rescue by Sho. There was a rescue scene by Sho, and a chase scene somewhat, but it's so underwhelming, with a very limited location. There's a whole house to be explored, but the movie never really explored that. I guess I was expecting something like Howl's Moving Castle or Spirited Away.

What shines though, is the human element, or shall I say the little human element too. The relationship between Arriety and her parents, between Sho and Arriety, and even little background elements about Sho's past is well done, but also feels a little underdeveloped. It was good, but it could have been explored further.

There's a lot of unsolved plot though, like whether Sho survives the heart surgery, what happened to the family of Borrowers that disappeared, and whether Arriety's family makes it OK. Maybe it's intended to be like that, since for me this movie seems to be a slice of life. This is a movie about a couple of days in the quiet country house, and it never really progress beyond that. It's peaceful and nice, but a bit simple for my liking. And for someone who loves thrilling scenes, this movie will bore you.

All in all, this is a nice animation by Ghibli as usual, but a little bit underwhelming for me. And I find it funny that The Borrowers Arriety and The Borrowers is two different movie based on the same novel, but it could never be more different.