Review by
Musanna Ahmed
Directed by: Goro Miyazaki
Voice Cast: Taylor Paige Henderson, Dan Stevens, Vanessa Marshall, Richard E. Grant,
Kacey Musgraves
Earwig and the Witch is a strange beast. The target audience
for this Ghibli latest is children and not necessarily those who have the
studio’s typical works as a reference point. Directed by
Goro Miyazaki, son of the beloved director Hayao, this small-scale
fantasy adventure looks nothing like the handcrafted epics of his father’s
work. But it’s only by considering that patented Hayao Miyazaki style that
one can examine the successes and the failures here, of which there is an
imbalanced amount.
Before we get to the overbearing elephant in the room that is the 3D
animation, let’s begin with the story. It takes place in the English
countryside during the '90s, when the lack of internet gave new people and
places a real sense of discovery. In an orphanage, the exuberant young
girl Earwig (Taylor Paige Henderson), who was abandoned by her
witch mother, is reluctantly adopted by the strange Bella Yaga (Vanessa Marshall) and Mandrake (Richard E. Grant). The enigmatic, magic-practicing
couple need an extra pair of hands and know Earwig’s potential for help as
a witch.
Earwig finds herself bored by the routine domesticity and, in her attempt
to see the outside world once again, she learns that Bella Yaga has sealed
the exits with her magic. The only being she can turn to is the house cat
Thomas (Dan Stevens), who reveals he can talk and proves to be
quite the charming ally. The duo concocts a concoction that will let them
break free from the indoors, pitting them against the rage of her adoptive
parents.
It’s a decent chamber piece centred on self-actualisation, which is
familiar thematic territory in Studio Ghibli by now. It has some nice
moments of interaction between the various characters, thanks to the top
voice actors who do a lot of heavy lifting to emit emotion when the
awkwardly animated faces cannot. But as it builds to an interesting
climax, it ends at an incredibly abrupt point. The MCU may have trained
modern filmgoers to stay after the credits for bonus scenes but this one
rewires us into staying and hoping for the actual third act.
Furthermore, it’s based on a novel by Dianna Wynne Jones, the same
author of Howl’s Moving Castle. In adapting that book, Hayao Miyazaki spun a wonderfully charming yarn
with his idiosyncratic approach. I haven’t read the source material of
this one, but if the film is an accurate adaptation, it feels like a
curiously lowkey entry of Jones’ bibliography, with none of the enchanting
elements of Howl’s Moving Castle. But certainly, the key difference is really the directors. Hayao is
obsessed with fulfilling his distinct artistic vision, whereas Goro here
puts the marketplace first, making something that he assumes would have
global appeal with the use of CGI.
Except it’s not successful at that. Occasionally, the visual quality looks
genuinely fascinating. Some establishing shots took me by surprise because
they looked photo-realistic, with fine textures and lighting. But the
disturbingly unnatural characters represent an enormous deficiency of
details. Pixar aims for a similar ambition – immersive production design
with caricaturish human models. But those models are more pleasantly
designed than what we have here (budget differences be damned), which is
the sort of nightmare fuel cooked up by an amateur artist sincerely
believing in their own hype.
Overall, though, the film itself isn’t as disastrous as it looks. But
coming from a studio with a high cinematic standard, it falls well, well
short in not just aesthetic quality but narratively and thematically too.
Earwig and the Witch is on UK/ROI
VOD Now.