The gist of the new Hayao Miyazaki movie sure sounds familiar. A 5-year-old boy named Sosuke makes a pet of a fish-like creature (she looks like a nightgown wearing a tadpole) that washes up on a cove near his house in a small fishing village. The creature, who Sosuke names Ponyo, tastes ham and human blood and decides that she would like nothing more than to be a little girl who spends all her time with Sosuke. Casually, you might hitch Miyazaki’s “Ponyo’’ to any iteration of “The Little Mermaid’’ tale, namely the musical one from Disney – which is also distributing “Ponyo.’’
But nothing in the great animation of a Miyazaki movie stays cute for long. Not the ocean, not the trees, not the critters that live in them. Change is constant but rarely natural. And nature is in bad shape. That is nothing new for this Japanese visionary, who’s been railing about man’s ecological ravages for years, most epically in 1998’s “Princess Mononoke.’’ “Ponyo’’ is Miyazaki ranting at a far less bellicose register. It’s also the director in a much less visually extravagant frame of mind than either “Spirited Away’’ or “Howl’s Moving Castle.’’ It’s his cuddliest movie since “My Neighbor Totoro’’ over 20 years ago. The softly but solidly drawn characters drive, swim, run, eat, jump, and mosey against impressionist watercolor backdrops.
Just because “Ponyo’’ is toothsome doesn’t mean it’s toothless. Even within the new movie’s relative visual and thematic modesty, Miyazaki sends distress signals.