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PLOT: A fantastical version of Europe is threatened by war while a narcissistic wizard learns to be selfless, thanks to the love of a young woman transformed into an elderly crone by a witch.
Howl's Moving Castle -- specifically the newly unveiled English dub of this Japanese mega-hit -- is good, but it is not great.
For most filmmakers, being good is an accomplishment.
In the case of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, who is a genius of anime, being just good is a serious slippage in quality.
Call it the curse of expectations. In children's fare such as the clever My Neighbor Totoro and the charming Kiki's Delivery Service, Miyazaki delighted audiences.
In more sophisticated films, such as Laputa Castle In The Sky, Princess Mononoke and the Oscar-winning masterpiece Spirited Away, he astounded us with his ability to transform complex dreamscapes into powerful experiences with a rich emotional, social and political subtext.
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But the new film shatters the illusion of Miyazaki's infallibility. The story, loosely inspired by English author Diana Wynne Jones' fantasy novel, is convoluted and jumbled, with too many sub-plots to allow most of them to be developed properly. As a result, many of those story threads are frayed.
In essence, this is a fractured love story between a selfish, though well-intentioned, wizard named Howl and a lonely young woman named Sophie, who has been turned into a wizened old crone in a spell cast by an evil witch who also lusts after Howl.
This story is set against the events leading up to a tragic war in what is a fantastical version of Europe in the early 1900s. The outbreak of World War I is suggested and our flawed hero Howl spends part of his time as a narcissistic prince and the rest as a courageous bird of prey fighting the forces of darkness.
The film veers maddeningly from the sublime to the silly. The anti-war theme -- which some believe is Miyazaki's protest of the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- is so muddled that it is pointless.
The moral lessons in the film read so naive you wonder what was lost in translation. Some lines of dialogue, especially declarations about the importance of beauty, just sound stupid.
That brings us to the crux of the problem in dealing with this English dub, which features the voices of Christian Bale as Howl, Emily Mortimer as young Sophie, Jean Simmons as elderly Sophie, Lauren Bacall as the Witch of the Waste and, notably, a blustering Billy Crystal as the fire demon Calcifer. DVDs of Miyazaki's past work allow us to choose either a subtitled Japanese original or the dubs, inviting comparisons. In most cases, both versions have been outstanding, if subtly different.
With Howl's Moving Castle, the original is not yet available here to compare. Pixar's John Lasseter produced the dub with Pete Docter and Rick Dempsey directing, so talent is involved, but it's likely they got the tone wrong.
Miyazaki's best work is brooding, sombre and reflective. But Crystal treats his fire demon as a Borscht Belt comedy act, over the top and out of place. Big mistake.
At the same time, the artwork generated by Miyazaki's team at Studio Ghibli is, again, just ravishing.
The visuals cast a spell as wondrous as those that the wizards in the movie create, so the film is well worth seeing. But it cannot claim the overall greatness we have come to expect from Miyazaki.
(This film is rated PG)