{"id":102786,"date":"2018-05-03T12:48:11","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T11:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=102786"},"modified":"2018-05-03T12:48:11","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T11:48:11","slug":"mary-and-the-witchs-flower-film-review-a-magic-first-film-from-studio-ghibli-veterans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/reviews\/mary-and-the-witchs-flower-film-review-a-magic-first-film-from-studio-ghibli-veterans\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary And The Witch&#8217;s Flower film review: a magic first film from Studio Ghibli veterans?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first thing that strikes you about this new anime is how much it looks like a Studio Ghibli film. The second is how beautifully painted the backgrounds are, picking out the flora and fauna in luscious detail.These are no coincidences \u2013much of the creative team had worked at Ghibli for many years, and director Hiromasa Yonebayashi was responsible for <strong><em>Arrietty<\/em><\/strong> and <strong><em>When Marnie Was There<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Like the aforementioned films, <strong><em>Mary And The Witch\u2019s Flower<\/em><\/strong> \u2013the debut feature from Studio Ponoc \u2013is based on a British children\u2019s book. It\u2019s about a bored girl who follows a black cat into an eerie forest, picks a rare flower that gives her temporary witch powers, then jumps on a discarded broom which zooms her away to a magic school in the clouds, presided over by a power-crazed duo based on Elizabeth I and her occult confidant John Dee.<\/p>\n<p>The moral of this tale should be don\u2019t trust cats, but it\u2019s actually about trusting in your own abilities and digging deep to do the right thing. Kids will probably love the brave, well-rounded heroine, plentiful action and Hogwarts-style school, but the film has enough of a creepy edge to keep adults entertained too.<\/p>\n<p>Yonebayashi has tapped into some Ghibli magic \u2013 with creatures and concepts that are just the right side of nightmarish \u2013 but the story is as unruly as Mary\u2019s broom. Allegiances change without clear motivation, the history of the broom and Mary\u2019s heritage isn\u2019t fully explored, and you can\u2019t help feeling that Yonebayashi may have got carried away with flamboyant visuals when he needed to be honing the narrative.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Mary And The Witch\u2019s Flower<\/em><\/strong> is, however, a promising start from Studio Ponoc, harking back to the \u2018good old days\u2019 when Ghibli made epic, fantastical films that didn\u2019t dwell on loss or old age. If you\u2019re after some colourful fun this\u2019ll do the trick, but let\u2019s hope Ponoc\u2019s next film offers as much for the brain as it does for the eyeballs.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LlN-3n_xY98\" width=\"616\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first film from Studio Ponoc is beautiful to look at, but is there substance as well as style?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":102792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[2615,8],"tags":[5949],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/maryandthewitchsflower.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102786"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}