The Cat Returns (2005)

"The Cat Returns" doesn't stand very high on the Studio Ghibli masterpiece scale but there's a sort of crazed whimsy at the heart of all of this. A young girl, whisked away to the cat kingdom by the (somewhat) deranged Cat King to marry his son, only to be rescued by a noble baron and his portly sidekick. It's a trip down the feline rabbit hole, to be sure, but not a boring one. Simple, but entertaining. It's a Ghibli, so it looks great, although the U.S. voice cast is a bit tame (Peter Boyle is the standout here).It's brisk and rambunctious, good fun for a lazy Sunday afternoon.6/10

I wish, I really wish I liked it better. I mean, I know from the synopsis that it's not that much original or innovative storyline but yet I still have hope for it. It is still good because of the duration, it's not dragging... but I think it could be better. The elements are just way too "familiar" and therefore I felt like nothing new is presented by the movie, I must say it feels a little bit of "Alice In The Wonderland" and then some other fairy tales at the other scenes, like... 'hey, it reminds me of...' moments keep happening to me. I thought at least there'd be anything new. But there's none...The characters also, are not so memorable... , I mean I can get a grasp of their personalities but there is nothing like, impressive... it's like each character personality are adopted from some other characters produced before in another movie.I'm sorry, but I really think it could be better. Or, I'm just not the target audience for this movie. Maybe...

I like this movie very much.I like Balon. Balon is cool cat. Balon is very cool guy. Heroine is Haru. She is high school student. Haru tooked by a cat. Haru as taken in cats world. Then, Haru transformed cat. I was so surprised.Haru saw many cats. Cats and Haru were make friends. It is so good. I want to make friends cats. Story is good. It is youth story. Cat's heart is wonderful. Theme song is good. Singer is Ayano Tuji. She is good singer. Her voice is nice. I played xylophone the theme song when I was high school student. This movie is my favorite movie. I want to see the movie again. I like this movie. I went to movie theater to see the movie.

I guess to begin I'll summarize the movie as I saw it. Initially, the story starts out with an ordinary female student experiencing the minor ups and downs of secondary school. This goes on for a while, but the real action begins when the protagonist saves a cat crossing the street and is drawn into the bizarre, fantastic, and wonderful world of sentient talking cats. The cat world was so original and absurd that I found myself frequently laughing out loud with delight as I watched. Eventually the protagonist gets out of an arranged marriage and makes her way back to the human world with the help of some friendly cats and some animated statues. Along the way she has gained confidence in herself, or something like that.From the summary, you can tell that this is a pretty typical hero's journey / coming of age type of story. Unfortunately, the movie was too short for the story to properly develop. At an hour and a quarter of run time, there is simply not enough room to create and develop characters, introduce a fantastical world, and carry out a plot before the ending. The result was that these various elements (characterization, setting, and plot) all competed for screen time and none of them were really done justice.This was not helped by the writing and characterization, which were quite weak and formulaic. In particular, the supposed personal transformation the protagonist experiences is just not believable. The protagonist is so little developed (she spends most of her time making various dismayed gasps) that she really functions more as a MacGuffin on legs than an actual character.Of the three elements of narrative -- character, plot, and setting, I felt the setting was the best developed. As I mentioned before, I loved the sheer ridiculousness of the Cat Kingdom, somewhat reminiscent of the imperial court of feudal Japan, as well as the dollhouse-coming- to-life aesthetic of the Cat Bureau. Of course, we only get to see a small part of this world, but I felt like the setting had greater potential that could've been explored in more depth.If the creators intended to make the movie a travelogue of the Cat Kingdom, they should have tightened up the story to spend as much time as possible in the fantasy world, and removed some of the irrelevant details from the protagonist's home life. On the other hand, if they wanted to tell an actual story, they should have taken more time to do so and maybe put some real effort into the writing and character development. They could've even done both if the movie were longer. Instead, they aimed somewhere in the middle and achieved neither.As a complete work, I'd consider this movie a failure, but I'm giving it 6 stars for the imaginative world and for making me laugh.