Duncan's review (posted somewhere below) gives a good description. I'll just add a few random comments.How fine to have a hand-drawn cartoon with only a few CG inserts!
The palette is remarkably dark.
Some of the scenes end rather abruptly, however.
While horrible things are happening to characters on screen, you're also sitting there laughing at the virtuosity of it all.
How long has it been since you've seen a mean little girl in a cartoon feature? She even punches her poor dog!
There is some obeisance in the English-language version to political correctness. For instance, at one point munitions agents from governments all over the world (yes!) are gathered, and a character remarks on that fact: "...from America, from France, from Germany, even from India." No mention whatsoever of two *very prominent* Arabs in the procession.
I counted it perhaps ten minutes overlong (not that I minded), then learned that the Japanese version (with subtitles) is twenty-three minutes longer yet! In my opinion the voices were excellently dubbed.
I don't see how anyone who has ever been a boy can help himself from being thrilled at this movie. As for the girls... dunno.
The audience was all grins when the lights came up. "Best cartoon I've ever seen!" one fellow remarked. Oh, right: there were happy women too.
After the plot got rolling I was thrilled by every moment.
The young boy Ray is confronted by a reality problem rarely encountered in literary or filmic depiction: Whom to believe. The director skillfully leads us up to the moment where it dawns on him, that he *doesn't* know. Nor do we -- yet.
And the discovery we eventually make -- well, it had me laughing through the tears.
Just GO!
clark
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Topic - Saw Steamboy yesterday. What a Masterpiece! - clarkjohnsen 08:49:53 03/21/05 (6)
- Of course girls love it. - Harmonia 14:14:40 03/23/05 (2)
- Actually... - Harmonia 19:37:19 03/25/05 (0)
- Good to hear! nt - clarkjohnsen 09:48:57 03/24/05 (0)
- Re: Better than " le Roi et l´oiseau " ? nt - patrickU 10:31:53 03/21/05 (2)
- Never saw it. nt - clarkjohnsen 10:52:43 03/21/05 (1)
- Re: Never saw it. nt - patrickU 11:00:37 03/21/05 (0)