The Secret World of Arrietty (2010)

The Secret World of Arrietty (PG)

"Small and in the walls"

A sick young man travels to his Aunt's country home to prepare for a surgery and finds a family of small thimble-sized people living under the floors in Studio Ghibli's adaptation of the beloved children's book The Borrowers that falls quite short of everyone's mark.

The animation is slow and robotic (often the case in non-Miyazaki films that try to repeat his art style), the plot is frustratingly uneventful.  The characters are monotone and bland, in many cases bewilderingly annoying.  The backgrounds and mattes are beautifully painted but sadly the movie and art style they are serving has almost nothing going for it, its all been done before yet better.  There was not a single piece of showpiece animation, no terrific action piece, no heartfelt moments of characterization.  Trope after trope with little humor and little action with a cute cat thrown in just to please the Ghibli-cult followers, Arrietty falls way short of the studio's best and instead simply cruises along on the weight of it's pedigree. And with a heroine as small and ineffectual as Arrietty, it doesn't add up to much.

4.5 The Littles Had a Better Song out of 10 (BAD)