Starring: Chizuru Ikewaki, Yoshihiko Hakamada, Aki Maeda, Takayuki Yamada, Hitomi Sato Directed By: Hiroyuki Morita Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: G (General Audience) Binding: DVD Format: Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Walt Disney Home Entertainment Number of Items: 2 Region Code: 1 Release Date: February 22, 2005 Running Time: 75 minutes Theatrical Release Date: 2002
Description: From the creators of the Academy Award(R) winning SPIRITED AWAY (Best Animated Feature Film, 2002) comes the visually stunning THE CAT RETURNS, a spectacular animated journey to a world of magic and adventure. Haru, a schoolgirl bored by her ordinary routine, saves the life of an unusual cat, and suddenly her world is transformed beyond anything she ever imagined. The Cat King rewards her good deed with a flurry of presents, including a very shocking proposal of marriage to his son! Haru embarks on an unexpected journey to the Kingdom of Cats where her eyes are opened to a whole other world and her destiny is uncertain. To change her fate, she'll need to learn to believe in herself and appreciate her everyday life. Featuring the sensational voice talents of Anne Hathaway, Cary Elwes, Tim Curry, and Elliot Gould, THE CAT RETURNS is a magical animated adventure that will delight and inspire everyone.
Amazon.com: The Cat Returns (2002) brings back Muta, the cranky fat cat, and Baron von Gikkingen, the elegant statue, from the feature Whisper of the Heart (1995). On her way home from school, Haru, a confused 17-year-old, prevents an elegant gray cat from being hit by a truck. She's inadvertently saved the life of Lune, Prince of the Cat Kingdom, and his royal father decides to thank her. He fills her locker with gift-wrapped mice and decides she should come to his kingdom and marry Lune. Haru seeks help from the Cat Bureau, and eventually returns to relatively normal life, with the assistance of Muta and the Baron.
The Cat Returns recalls Whisper of the Heart and Takashi Nakamura's Catnapped, but it offers neither the wistful charm of the former nor the bold visual imagination of the latter. Hayao Miyazaki has been seeking young directors for Studio Ghibli for several years. After preparing the script and storyboards for Whisper, he turned the film over to Yoshifumi Kondo, who died tragically shortly after the film's release. The Cat Returns was directed by Hiroyuki Morita, who shows promise, but lacks Kondo's elegant sensibility. The DVD extras include a fulsome making-of documentary, Morita's voluminous storyboards, and mini-interviews with the vocal cast that includes Tim Curry, Cary Elwes, Peter Boyle, and Elliott Gould. (Rated G: minor scary imagery and cartoon violence) --Charles Solomon
Charming, but ultimately medicore. This is basically a fullm movie expanding on some of the ideas you may have seen in Whisper Of The Heart. The whole thing moves at on odd pace, and is usually too slow for me. Would be good for the younger female crowd. Doesn't have a broader age appeal like Howl's Moving Castle has.
The Cat Returns Just to clear up a misconception - this film should not be considered a sequel to Whisper of the Heart. Although the two cat characters, the Baron and Muta, are shared in the two films, the stories have absolutely nothing to do with each other, other than the lead female character being a schoolgirl in a uniform, and both showing a realistic glimpse of life in Japan. In Whisper, Muta is truly Mute, while here he is a wisecracking albeit faithful warrior, who sounds not entirely unlike Nyako Sensei, a 1970s anime.
If you like Ghibli, cats, Japan, fantasy adventure, or good Anime, you might like The Cat Returns.
A surprisingly good movie! Based on other reviews of this, and knowing Miyazaki was not at the helm for this one, I was a bit worried about its quality. But it's the only Ghibli movie we didn't have, so we got it for our son's b-day.
Other than the awkward transitions from scene to scene (the screen goes black for a few seconds, as if it were about to cut to a commercial (!), the movie was quite up to the normal Ghibli standards. The animation was good (nothing IMHO measures up to "Howl's Moving Castle" as far as animation goes) and the story was remarkably good. It was a very uplifting story. People on IMDB are always complaining about the English dubs of Ghibli films, but we thought the voices were fine. We don't speak Japanese anyway, so we'd never really be able to tell if the voices were dubbed "wrong" or whatever.
Highly recommended. We all liked it much better than "Whisper of the Heart," which was the first Ghibli movie featuring the "Baron" cat character. This movie is not a sequel - other than the Baron, nobody from "Whisper" is in it - and contains its own good story.
A Miyazaki is still a Miyazaki I wasn't sure about this particular Miyazaki film since I'm not a big fan of the cover. A cat in a suit? Hrm. Due to his track record of wonderful titles, I bought it anyway on faith and was not disappointed. I still think I like his later work a little better, but this one is still worth a spot in your DVD collection.
Another Anime for the daughter. Just close to 12 at the time and absorbed in anime, this also met her cat-fancy needs. She loved it, I watched it with her, and it's not a typical wide-eyed, violent Japanese anime. Chick-flick, pre-teen style, ala Japan, I guess. I don't pretend to understand, and I pray it's one of those "phases", lol....but she loved it.
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