Catholic-ometer: 2 of 5
Enjoyability: 4.5 of 5
As an honest movie-watcher, and an appreciator of a good story, I love the works of Studio Ghibli. They always produce beautiful movies with lovable characters and interesting plots.
However, I'm also a faithful Christian who notices when something seems likely to cause moral or religious confusion. These two sides of myself have occasionally forced me to give Ghibli movies an imperfect grade, even when I really enjoyed them (and aside from one, which was too confusing, I've enjoyed all the ones I've seen.)
However, I feel I would be doing this movie a disservice if I tried to look at it through both of those lenses at once, so instead, I'll give my movielover's thoughts, followed by my thoughts as a Christian.
This movie is more than a little confusing at times, because like many Ghibli films, it often communicates nonverbally. When large, black shapes start popping out of the walls, there's no explanation for it any deeper than "magic bad guys," and even many of the main characters are a little hard to comprehend the real motives of, most notably Howl himself.
On the whole, however, the movie comes off as a stunningly-beautiful fairy tale. The side-characters are fun and likable, the main characters mysterious and interesting, and there's always the sense that there's a lot more to learn about them; right up to the moment the movie ends. Magic is cast, spells are broken, there's a war to struggle through, a happy ending to reach, and the soul of an innocent boy to redeem.
The main character; Sophie, is cursed very early on in the film, and it takes a while for her to understand what kind of curse it is, and what needs to be done to break it. I'm sure everyone will have their own theories on that, since it's not stated outright.
The relationship between Sophie and Howl comes off as a sort of odd retelling of Beauty and the Beast, except that beauty, in this case, is cursed to look like an old woman, and the beast is uncommonly pretty-looking most of the time. Ultimately, both curses must be broken, and a happy ending attained, and as in most fairy tales, the characters labor through times of suffering and are ultimately rewarded with family and love; the perfect fairy tale formula.
I think I should also say a word about the costuming, which may be an odd term to use when talking about an animated feature, but so be it. I loved how the characters dressed; all the characters. It's an alternate-world, sort-of-period-piece, and has its own style of dress, utterly different from the way we dress today, and that, in this case, is a very good thing. By itself, the modesty and otherness of this one aspect of the film roped me in and kept me watching steadily until the very end.
However, as a Christian, I think this movie is likely to confuse young children; not because of all the spells and magic; they're always depicted as causing problems, and never really solve them. The real reason why I think this movie would religiously-confuse young children is because of one badly-used word; demon.
I could talk for an hour about the various words in Japanese used to represent monsters of various types; oni, youkai, akki, etc... However, the one used in this film is "akuma" which is correctly translated as "demon."
However, the problem is that the "demons" in this film are not nearly as evil as the word "akuma" implies. Calcifer, in particular, is one of the main characters, and is supposed to be a demon, but in practice, is mainly a cute lick of flame played quite nicely by Billy Crystal. He's a bit of a pest, but acts more like a naughty child than a malicious evil spirit, and that might be confusing to young children, who are still learning the ins and outs of their real religion.
Just to be clear, however, this is not the fault of any mistranslation. "Akuma" implies something horribly evil in the same way "demon" does. It's just that neither word seems to apply well to Calcifer.
As a Christian, I believe firmly in the existence of demons, and that taking them lightly can be a dangerous thing to do. Mature people will know that it's just fiction, and file it away as such, but for kids... Parental guidance is suggested.
That said, when you get past the misuse of the word "demon," it's really a very heartwarming film with a happy ending and a number of good messages about family, devotion, sacrifice and love. I enjoyed it a lot, but then again, it's Ghibli, and that's a pretty safe bet for quality entertainment, even in the rare cases when they're not particularly kid-friendly.
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