Tales from Earthsea.

"With such vivid masterpieces as My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies (both 1988), Studio Ghibli has more than 20 years of excellence behind it. To find its nearest equal, you would have to go back to Walt Disney in the 1930s and 1940s," writes Ryan Gilbey in the New Statesman. "I had never felt the faintest disappointment at any one of the company's films until I saw Tales from Earthsea. Now everything has changed. Sunsets are no longer majestic. Birdsong has lost its melody. The perfume of the flowers in my garden is dulled, though that could be something to do with next door's cats, the filthy blighters. Yes, Studio Ghibli has produced its first tedious film."

"Potter fans who have turned the final page and are in need of another fantasy fix could do a lot worse than this," suggests the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, "and of course the same goes for devotees of Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea novels."

"Stylistically it's a mishmash of Celtic mysticism, Mediterranean architecture and cartoon villainy," writes Anthony Quinn in the Independent. "The philosophical debates on the nature of life and death are surprisingly persuasive, though the film overextends its finale by at least half an hour."

"[I]t's [Hayao] Miyazaki's son Goro at the reins, and his adaptation never takes flight," writes the Telegraph's Tim Robey. "it's compressed and confusing, taxing the patience with talky exposition well into the second hour."

As you've probably figured by now, the film's opening in the UK, but not the US. As yet, anyway. Don't see a US release date.

Posted by dwhudson at August 3, 2007 10:42 AM