The plot: Red-haired scamp Mary (Ruby Barnhill) has moved in
with her great-aunt Charlotte (Lynda Baron) and, with a week left to go before
school starts, she has found herself struggling to find ways to occupy her
time. However, that all changes when a chance encounter in the nearby forest
leads her to the Ender College, a prestigious school for witches and warlocks,
with headmaster Madame Mumblechook (Kate Winslet) remarking that Mary could be
a truly incredible witch. To make things even more surreal, it seems that this
college isn’t all that it seems, and it’s up to Mary to get to the bottom of
the college’s less-than-virtuous ambitions.
I’m going by the English dub for the film, and
“English” certainly is the operative word since this is just about the poshest
voice cast I’ve yet to cover on this blog as far as animated films go. Barnhill
as our lead does well at channelling the kind of young female protagonist
director Hiromasa Yonebayashi is most familiar with, although that is far more
of an accomplishment considering the rather basic character she’s been given
here. Probably helps that she has some prior experience with this kind of protagonist from The BFG. Lynda Baron as her great-aunt Charlotte, combined with Morwenna “No, I
still haven’t forgiven you for Miss You Already” Banks as the housekeeper, do
very nicely at setting up the initial grounding.
Winslet as Madame McGonagall… er… I mean Madame Mumblechook,
aside from being a vast improvement over the last time we checked in on her,
might have done a little too well as
being the initially-pleasant headmaster, given the character switch-ups that
happen later. Jim Broadbent as the chemistry teacher Doctor Dee gives some real
buoyancy to the part, Teresa Gallagher as the Red Headed Witch works alright
considering her only vocal presence involves delivering ALL the exposition, and
Ewen Bremner as the flying instructor Flanagan makes for a good first
impression into the hidden world of magic in this story.
This is the feature-length debut of Studio Ponoc, and it
seems that Yonebayashi has brought a truckload of experience from his days with
Studio Ghibli as this film definitely striking to look at. It may show the
occasional bit of budget-stretching chicken scratch, but the animators give a
lot of serene beauty to Mary’s English abode and it only increases in grandeur
once we reach the magic college. The amount of attention to minor detail in how
the locale, the people who inhabit it and the magic at their fingertips are
realized results in a very solid visual offering.
However, as I let slip during
the cast rundown, it is near-impossible not to draw parallels between this and
another story involving prodigious English children going to a school of magic.
Partly because of the minor details that make said comparisons all too easy,
but also because I wish I was watching a Hogwarts-set story as opposed to what
is offered here. Once we reach the magic school, its place in the film’s
universe is explored through the most surface-level world-building imaginable.
It doesn’t even give us a chance to get lost in this world of wonder before
immediately and repeatedly leading the audience by the collar to the next plot
point like a cat on a leash.
This isn’t helped by the characterisation of everyone we see
here, which likewise relies on a lot of skin-deep detail.
*SPOILERS*
Starting off with Mary, we have a lead character who is
apparently a magical prodigy whose main fault is that she is rather clumsy.
Good thing they explained her last name is Smith because, otherwise, I would
have assumed that it was Sue, given how familiar this archetype is. Then
there’s her friendship with local boy Peter (Louis Ashbourne Serkis), which
basically goes from “ooh, I hate him” to “oh no, I have to save him” without
even a hint of transition. Then there’s Mumblechook and Doctor Dee, who also
suffer from a lack of adjustment from being the good guys to being the bad
guys. We aren’t even given enough time to latch onto them before being given
express reasons not to. To say nothing of Flanagan, who only exists in this
story to be at the right place at the right time to either give exposition or
to flat-out save our leads. Because of this, the most likeable character in
this whole thing is Mary’s cat familiar Tib, as the cat not only doesn’t ever
talk but also gives the perfect rolling-of-eyes reaction to everything
happening around it.
Not to say that this film has nothing going for it in terms
of writing. Far from it, as while the setting isn’t given as much detail as one
would like, the way it looks into the mechanics of magic leads the film down
some familiar but ultimately intriguing paths. It treats magic and science as
intertwined, giving some decent titbits like how potion-making is just
chemistry under a different name, and it keeps that same approach once it gets
into the less-than-savoury side of magic in this world.
Honestly, as much as it
is a little easy to make comparisons to Studio Ghibli given the film’s
production pedigree, this is where the comparison becomes a bit more
favourable, as this film carries quite a few of the more naturalistic touches
audiences associate with the work of Miyazaki and co.
Through the synergy of magic and science, it gets into
discussions of how they are both tools at the hands of mortal creatures and how
natural elements aren’t to be trifled with, entering into discussions about
experimentation and animal testing that would feel right at home in a more
fantasy-tinged version of Okja. It creates subtext with the kind of deft touch
that Ghibli mostly managed to pull off, but it still clashes with the elements
surrounding it. As solid as this commentary is on man and nature and where the
two need to leave each other alone, it’s still being delivered through a barely
fleshed-out world and painfully basic characters. As a result, it ends up
faltering under the weight of everything else it has to carry on its back,
resulting in a film that is more than a little disappointing.
All in all, this is an unfortunately plain affair. The voice
acting is solid and the visuals can get quite vibrant at times, but the writing
lets both of those positives down at nearly every turn. The characters are flat
and irritatingly developed, the setting never ends up feeling like anything other
than window-dressing, and while the story may have some good points to make
about scientific experimentation, it also suffers from a lack of real detail
into anything that we’re seeing. That, and a lot of the bigger plot points are
brought up and resolved in rather insultingly convenient ways.
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