Kiki's Delivery Service

One of the DVDs I received for my birthday was yet another Hayao Miyazaki film, Kiki's Delivery Service. I had asked for this film because I'm trying to complete my collection of Miyazaki's films (there are eight...I currently have five), but I had put off actually watching it for two reasons: first, I've become extremely distracted by Xbox since then and chose to spend my time playing games instead of watching movies, and second, this movie looked about as uninteresting as a Miyazaki film could.

So, I finally got around to watching it yesterday, and although it had some charming elements (of particular interest the city where the story takes place and how cute some of the characters were), this was easily the worst Miyazaki film I've yet seen. The biggest gripe I have with it is that it ends VERY abruptly, so much so that it almost felt like a really long TV cartoon instead of a film. Although this would be understandable if this were one of his earliest films, this is actually his fourth, and his second, Castle in the Sky, which I've already seen, doesn't have this problem, so it leaves me wondering what they were thinking...did they just run out of time or ideas?

Also tied into the problem of an abrupt ending was the fact that there wasn't really much of a plot or any character development. There were plenty of opportunities for Kiki to grow (this being her year away from home to do so), but the movie skirts these potentialities and focuses on far inferior plot points. Also, the soundtrack for this film just wasn't up to par with the soundtracks of the other films, even though they were all done by the typically brilliant Joe Hisaishi (Spirited Away's soundtrack is easily one of my favorites of all time).

Regardless, I'm glad I saw this movie and that it's in my collection, but let's just say I don't think I'll be showing it to anybody anytime soon...hell, I might not even watch it ever again myself!

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