"My Neighbour Totoro" is a delightful film that most young children - as well as a good proportion of older viewers - are sure to enjoy. It's not a particularly deep film, nor a particularly exciting film. At the heart of it, it's a simple tale about a family relocating to the countryside and the children meeting some weird and wonderful creatures, but it is so much more than that. The magic is in the characters, for "My Neighbour Totoro" is filled with some of the cutest, most iconic characters in anime. And amongst these unforgettable characters, it's the big, adorably fluffy King Totoro himself that steals the show, so it's fitting he is somewhat of a mascot for Studio Ghibli the way Mickey Mouse is for Disney.
Fantastically weird non-human characters maybe a trait in Miyazaki films, but so are rather less interesting human ones, and "My Neighbour Totoro" inherits both of these traits. The human character has a familiar look about them, as though they're the bloodline relatives to the characters from other Miyazaki movies. Then there's the much used tomboy girl and the boy who wants to make friends with her set up that Miyazaki so likes to use. However, in the midst of these recycled characters, I do like Mei, who's like the adorable little sister that everyone would love to have.
Like a lot of other Miyazaki films, "My Neighbour Totoro" does contain a dose of the usual environmental messages, but this isn't Miyazaki in one of his more preachy moods. In this film, the message isn't forced upon us, instead it is gently conveyed across by opening our eyes to the wonders of life. Totoro himself is like a kind of guardian of the forest, doing rain dances, making the trees spring up, all in a very lovable manner. For sure, a lot of the stuff is made up - obviously, in reality there are no creatures like Totoro that can perform miracles such as accelerating the growth of trees etc, but beneath all the imagination, the feelings and the message themselves are very genuine. This is helped along by the beauty of the artwork - I may not be a fan of Miyazaki's human character designs, but the beautifully drawn natural scenaries are as stunning as always.
Even though this is film is rather uneventful - there aren't really any particularly dramatic or epic events, but it succeeds because there's a sense joy that's prevalent throughout. For instance the scene where Mei bounces up and down on the fluffy belly of Totoro, and another where rain drops falls repeatedly onto the nose of a rather dopey looking Totoro... these are all simple scenes, but they're scenes that are bursting with pure, innocent charm. It's these little things that makes "My Neighbour Totoro" a bit special, and it's these little things that makes it one of my favourites from the Ghibli collection.
