elicopperman

Still as emotionally captivating now as when I was 13, The Secret World of Arrietty is a charming adaptation of The Borrowers in addition to being highly engaging for people of all ages. Stories focusing on tiny human beings often lead to unique perspectives on the tiny details within the world, and director Hiromasa Tonebayashi pulls the audience into the life of Arrietty and her parents who live beneath an old house with more history relating to their own kind than meets the eye. Arrietty herself is fun to follow as her curiosity regarding the world above her come at odds with her own personal anxieties relating to her own world. As kind hearted as she is around her parents, Arrietty truly blossoms with a new found relation to a sick young boy named Sho, as his lack of human connection makes him a good bridge between two different worlds of human beings.

One of the movie's central themes relates to the endless possibilities that the future may bring despite us not knowing how it'll turn out. With that in mind, it's quite fascinating to see how human beings react towards those that are tinier than them in different ways. Sho doesn't know what his future will bring given his illness yet he feels strong with a genuine friend like Arrietty by his side. In contrast, the house maid Haru wants to prove that the borrowers are real alongside exterminating them, but her future isn't as fulfilling as it might seem given how preoccupied she becomes with trying to prove their existence. As fantasy oriented as this movie is, it nonetheless respects its grounded reality by means of reminding people to look towards the future with more hope than worry, whether you're a borrower or a regular human being.

It's hard to say whether The Secret World of Arrietty is completely faithful to Mary Norton's classic fantasy novel The Borrowers, but it's still a delightful story on its own with lovable characters and engrossing world building. Getting to see how Arrietty and her family interact inside the household walls and rooms allows one to experience a whole new outlook on our own worlds, regardless of size. Rarely do most animated features go within the tinier realms of reality as opposed to the larger scaled areas, and getting to see this on the big screen for GhibliFest felt like such a breath of fresh air.

How do you screw up a Tex Avery inspired film reel gag this poorly? If you're not gonna have the actual reel flicker and move, why even bother replicating the gag in the first place?

In all seriousness, it genuinely saddens me that animation legend Vladimir Peter "Bill" Tytla sunk to making cartoons this insipidly subpar, especially when he was not only a top tier aster animator, but also made some subjectively decent works at Famous Studios. On top of creating Little Audrey and working well within more dramatically emotional works like The Bored Cuckoo and Leprechaun's Gold, his Little Lulu and Popeye were serviceable in terms of fantasy surrealism and slapstick timing. Unfortunately, none of that charm can be found in this dreadful short.

As much as I usually hate comparing works to each other, the entire runtime feels like I'm being reminded of better cartoons from directors who actually liked making slapstick oriented shorts (the aforementioned Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, Bill Hanna & Joe Barbera). Even better cartoons about birds surviving behind hunted for Thanksgiving (Holiday for Drumsticks and Jerky Turkey) came to mind because they at least had funnier set ups and wackier timing. The basic premise of a farmer running around his farm to catch a turkey he initially spoiled isn't necessarily bland in concept, but the filmmakers do nothing other than typical chase gags and tired slapstick. Lastly, the ending doesn't work as a darkly humorous payoff because it implies that the farmer is stupid enough to have attempted eating the turkey every year (even by cartoon logic, that's far fetched).

The only slight positive I can give this train wreck is Arnold Stang's wise guy performance as the turkey itself, at least for no other reason then it reminds me of Herman the mouse. The same can't be said for Sid Raymond whose dope like performance doesn't fit the farmer's design, but I'd rather at least acknowledge solid voice work when I hear it. Otherwise, there's nothing worthwhile about this short other than you're better off just devouring turkey today.

Satirizing male models and their industry has rarely looked so absurd, and seeing someone so vapidly dumb yet radiantly flamboyant as Derek Zoolander being used to assassinate a prime minister by another fashion mogul leads to humorous results. Having never seen this flick before, Stiller's idiotic humor works well in the feature's commentary on how artificially vain yet intellectually stagnant the modeling industry can be, and the mystery angle adds into just how ludicrous the competition can be. Also, if not for nothing, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson have some of the corniest bromance macho energy I've seen in a film like this. And for as annoying as Will Ferrell can come off as Jacobim Mugatu, the film at least knows to channel his crazed energy within his own sequences rather than the whole plot. All in all, Zoolander is far from the smartest comedy out there, but it gets its best laughs from its primary subject matter, and I certainly can't fault it for that.