Mary and the Witches Flower

Opening night at Hiff and the big movie of the night seemed to be Mary and The Witchs Flower. I was one of the first in line and excited to see the film. Creator Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s film seemed to be a popular movie because the audience was packed. Produced by Studio Ponoc in Japan the movie had a look and feel like a Studio Ghibli mainly because the founder of Studio Ponco was a producer at Studio Ghibli. The film is based on Martha Stewart’s The Little Broomstick.

Now let me start with that I like this film. It was cute and beautiful to look at, it had moments that pulled at my heart strings.

HOWEVER, to me personally it was just too predictable and came off just as another Studio Ghibli movie. I felt there was little in style or writing that changed this from a movie by Ghibli. The character designs, color techniques I expected something different from a different studio not an imitation of a big-name company. The movie itself was very predictable to me I guessed everything that would happen within the first thirty minutes. I did get a little bored watching but, what the plot line lacked the animation made up for. Everything was beautiful to watch and in my opinion, one can see the time put in to each character. For the little paper they gave us to rate the movie I gave it a 3 for average. I know think that it maybe should have gotten a 4 but in the moment of voting I was feeling a little let down by the movie and did not think about all the good things it did have.

Overall it is a good movie with great animation and an interesting story it was based on. It was not better than Studio Ghibli but it was not worse. I would see this again it had a good message, bright, and well made.