Amazon.com essential video: My Neighbor Totoro is that rare delight, a family film that appeals to children and adults alike. While their mother is in the hospital, 10-year-old Satsuki and 4-year-old Mei move into an old-fashioned house in the country with their professor father. At the foot of an enormous camphor tree, Mei discovers the nest of King Totoro, a giant forest spirit who resembles an enormous bunny rabbit. Mei and Satsuki learn that Totoro makes the trees grow, and when he flies over the countryside or roars in his thunderous voice, the winds blow. Totoro becomes the protector of the two sisters, watching over them when they wait for their father, and carrying them over the forests on an enchanted journey. When the children worry about their mother, Totoro sends them to visit her via a Catbus, a magical, multilegged creature with a grin the Cheshire Cat might envy.
Unlike many cartoon children, Satsuki and Mei are neither smart-alecky nor cloyingly saccharine. They are credible kids: bright, energetic, silly, helpful, and occasionally impatient. Filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki makes the viewer believe the two sisters love each other in a way no American feature has ever achieved. My Neighbor Totoro is enormously popular in Japan, and some of the character merchandise has begun to appear in America. The film has also inspired a Japanese environmental group to buy a Totoro Forest preserve in the Saitama Prefecture, where Miyazaki's film is set. --Charles Solomon
Great movie, but the DVD not so much This movie is a great Miyazaki film, I remember watching it when i was a little kid when it was released on VHS, it was my first anime ive seen. The voiceovers were just fine, but then Disney releases this box of crap with the most annoying voice overs ever, they even changed some of the dialogue. Come on, Dakota Fanning?! Could you pick a more annoying voice for the older sister. She sounds like a little girl the same age as her little sister. Horrible just horrible, it butchered the original version so now when people go to watch it they wont enjoy it like most did when it was released on vhs.
magical tale of discovery this is a touching story about two girls who the viewer follows around while they discover and explore their surroundings. some of the time their... over-exuberant attitude can be a little much, but if you're in the right mood that can be passed off as cute. the girls' actions and reactions are innocent and sweet and really taps into the wonder experienced by your inner child... or not if you're still a child. but its a good movie, definitely worth the viewing!
My Neighbor Totoro I have this movie on VHS and recently purchased the DVD. It's a great movie except that when I recieved the DVD and watched it, it was different from the original. I noticed the voices were different from the original, and dialoge was changed. I was very disappointed because the original was so much more exciting and so much more fun. It was more dramatic in the original than in this Version of Totoro. So if your looking for the original, this isn't it. Voices were played by recent actors such as Dakota fanning and others, which were not the voices of the original.
Childhood, Captured If I have children, I will make sure that "My Neighbor Totoro" is among the first films they ever see. This is one of the purest, most untainted children's movies in existence, bursting with the kind of wonder and curiosity that few adults are able to hold onto. I'm guessing that Hayao Miyazaki is one of those adults; he has yet to produce a bad animated film, but "Totoro" may prove to be the most timeless. It speaks to the child in us all.
If I told you that the movie is about two small girls who wander off on their own and hang out with strange, mysterious creatures -- with the approval of their parents -- would you be appalled? The biggest obstacle for "Totoro" is that it is very Japanese and reflects their society rather than ours, including the "radical" viewpoint that parents should trust their children, take them at face value, and let them explore rather than chaperoning them through life. But any parent who feels that this movie will be unhealthy for their children has forgotten what childhood is like. Childhood is scary, wondrous, frustrating, joyful, exhilarating, baffling, colorful, eccentric....and the list goes on. "Totoro" speaks plainly and directly to children with its words and images, and I cannot easily imagine a parent passing it over in favor of Disney Channel dreck.
The plot is more of a situation: sisters Satsuki and Mei (ages 10 and 5, respectively) move into a wonderfully ramshackle new house in a rural district that seems locked in a simpler, gentler time. Their mother is ill and has been moved to a local hospital; their father, a professor of anthropology, is kind and caring and open-minded. The house is one every child should aspire to live in: quirky, unpredictable, and just unsafe enough to be fun. (Watch American mothers gasp in horror as the girls casually play with a rotting, wobbly porch beam.) It is also, they soon learn, haunted. But these are not Western ghosts, which always seem to be terrifying and/or sad. These spirits are not the souls of the dead, but rather a part of the local environment itself. There are the Soot Sprites, scampering little balls of dust that flee from laughter. The Cat Bus, which is....well....both a cat and a bus. Most prominent are the Totoros, which resemble a furry, avocado-shaped cross between a cat, a rabbit, and an owl. Little Mei ventures into the forest and encounters a Totoro the size of a VW van, and although its toothy grin and guttural roar seem fearsome at first, it clearly means her no harm. It seems almost childlike itself, sleepy and curious and delighted by raindrops falling on an umbrella, though it eventually reveals itself to have great elemental power.
There are no monsters or dangers in this world. It is not about a perilous adventure or quest, though the third act contains a straightforward crisis that must be overcome. It is about these sisters, who love each other and who love to explore. It is about their parents, who look them in the eye, tell them the truth, and believe what they say in turn. It is about something marvelous that they find, something they are still young enough to hold onto. (Significantly, the adults cannot see the Totoros.) It is about growing up and dealing with grownup things (such as sickness and the threat of loss), but still being able to scream and holler and be a kid. The situation is fantastical, but the characters, ironically enough, are some of the most real people that you will see in an animated film. At the end, we see enough to let us know that things will be all right, and then they are allowed to go on with their lives, and we are left to think about them, and dream. Few films have that simple power. "My Neighbor Totoro" is easy to overlook, which is a pity, because it's one of the greatest films ever made. I mean that.
A good, but not great, Miyazaki film "Totoro" is well-animated but not M's best (I still think "Howl's Moving Castle" takes the cake for that), but we find the story to be a bit slow and distressing. We've owned all Miyazaki's other films for a few years but somehow we just never really wanted to buy this one (though I did, recently, so that we could have a complete collection). The wife in the story is hospitalized, the kids are always quite sad about it; the littler girl is extremely sad about this, and there's a protracted scene where she's lost and all the neighbors are in a serious flap trying to find her: dredging local ponds for her body and so on. A bit heavy to explain to a kid.
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