At its core, Howl's Moving Castle is about two things (at least, by my reading). First, it's a story of a young girl coming to discover her own inner beauty and resolve through love (as represented through a witch's curse), and two, it relates the horror and heartbreak of watching war turn a loved one into a monster (also represented by a curse). These are strong elements, but Howl's Moving Castle starts throwing so many characters and turns at us that these central threads get lost in the tangle. The war is clearly, CLEARLY, meant to be evocative of the Japanese perspective in World War 2, but we quickly lose any thread of what's supposed to be going on - and then everyone decides that there shouldn't be a war because, hey, it's the end of the movie and we need to wrap things up.
The characters really get the short end of the stick from all the narrative clutter. Howl and Sophie feel more like distant, hazy sketches than fully realized beings, and everyone else is completely left by the wayside. It doesn't help that the movie keeps adding to the cast as it goes along, mostly to its detriment (the evil witch and spy dog tag along and everyone just goes with it because, hey, Spirited Away also had the somewhat antagonistic Baby and No Face join Chihiro in her journey, so it should also work here without any of the deliberate set up).
For a movie that belabors getting to its end so much, it's odd how little time it sets aside for actually concluding, ultimately culminating in one of the most slapdash finales I've seen in a while.
The animation is beautiful, the soundtrack is stirring, all the technical highlights one would expect of a Miyazaki film are here, but the final product feels desperately in need of focus. On the one hand, I doubt that Hayao Miyazaki put too much stock into Spirited Away's financial and critical acclaim, but the movie does feel like a victory lap from an artist feeling victorious, invincible, and above a second draft.
