"Pom Poko" Talkback (Spoilers)

[Ben]

Now out on DVD in the US. For you. To buy.

Though it's Takahata's weakest film, Pom Poko still has its moments. Where else can you see stretchy raccoon testicles in a kids' movie?

[Chris Wood]

I saw this one in the theater. I didn't care for it much. It's just too typically Ghibli - eccentric animals doing traditional Japanese stuff and bemoaning the state of the environment. I've had quite enough of that formula.

[Ben]

I saw this one in the theater. I didn't care for it much. It's just too typically Ghibli - eccentric animals doing traditional Japanese stuff and bemoaning the state of the environment. I've had quite enough of that formula.

Yeah, the environment stuff was pretty bad. Especially the ending, which felt tacked-on at best. But how can you have too much eccentric animals doing Japanese stuff?

I think this film makes an interesting (but not very interesting) contrast to Totoro. That Miyazaki chose to make up a bunch of fuzzies and Takahata decided to renovate well-worn Japanese traditional ones says something about their different mindsets.

[Chris Wood]

[Ben] But how can you have too much eccentric animals doing Japanese stuff?

I'm not very interested in the Japan of yesteryear (except for military history). I find the extremely traditional mindset mildly annoying. I'm all about the increasingly liberal-minded Japan of today. A few traditions are cool, but Japan just has so darn many you feel boxed in sometimes.


I think this film makes an interesting (but not very interesting) contrast to Totoro. That Miyazaki chose to make up a bunch of fuzzies and Takahata decided to renovate well-worn Japanese traditional ones says something about their different mindsets.

Uh oh, you're going to make me speak my mind on Totoro, are you? I... wasn't... so... hot for that one either (cringes). There's just so little story, and when Totoro finally shows up I didn't even like him that much. The cat bus was cool though.

[MrBananagrabber]

Yeah, the environment stuff was pretty bad. Especially the ending, which felt tacked-on at best.
Yeah, I mean, he turned right to the camera and started preaching to the audience. Really unnecessary.

I just felt that this was slower and longer than it had to be. Maybe it was because the characters all looked so similar, but it was slightly hard to tell them apart/care about them. It wasn't a terrible film by any means, just very mediocre.

And the DVD didn't even have that "Behind the Microphone" featurette all of the other ones have. I mean, it's basically the same feature every movie, but this was just bad. Some cultural notes would have been really nice.

[Senbei Norimaki]

Pom Poko is my least favorite Takahata Ghibli film. It is still a good movie none the less. I like the moral about people building settlements on other people land.:p

[BrendaBat]

How is the dub? I've only seen the Japanese version (with bad bootleg subtitles).

I thought Pom Poko was longer than it needed to be. It was cute and it had its moments; but about one hour into the movie I started looking at the clock every 10 minutes and saying, "When the hell is this thing going to end?". Some scenes didn't make sense to me (probably a combonation of the culture gap and the bad subtitles). The only scenes I really loved were the ones where the tanuki were screwing with the humans. Those were pretty funny. :D

The guilt-trip ending was pretty lame. If I want to watch cartoon characters tell me that I'm killing cute widdle animals with my wasteful, human ways; I'll watch Captain Planet. :p

[Dudley]

How is the dub? I've only seen the Japanese version (with bad bootleg subtitles).

I thought Pom Poko was longer than it needed to be. It was cute and it had its moments; but about one hour into the movie I started looking at the clock every 10 minutes and saying, "When the hell is this thing going to end?". Some scenes didn't make sense to me (probably a combonation of the culture gap and the bad subtitles). The only scenes I really loved were the ones where the tanuki were screwing with the humans. Those were pretty funny. :D

The guilt-trip ending was pretty lame. If I want to watch cartoon characters tell me that I'm killing cute widdle animals with my wasteful, human ways; I'll watch Captain Planet. :p
Wow. I saw it in Japanese with bad subtitles too, and I felt the movie was too long as well.

[Vekou]

I didn't like it. I just can't take this kind of movie seriously on its own (you know, the woe-is-us environmentalist hippie propoganda kind of movie) and certainly not when there's some kind of visual gag relating to a character's scrotum every couple of minutes. I know, that part's not supposed to be as gross-out funny as it seems. The Tanuki is a mythical Japanese creature that can transform and do all kinds of impossible and strange things with its... family jewels. It's just one of those cultural things that simply will not fly over here no matter how cute the rest of the movie is or how conspicuous they are about it (it's called a "pouch" in the dub - which, I suppose, is accurate to a degree, since the scrotum is indeed a "pouch" of sorts - but they are still just skirting around the obvious). I don't think that this film should have even been brought over here. Thankfully Disney is not promoting it. It would give Japanese animation in general an even worse reputation over here.

I saw the dub at Comic-Con 2005. Maurice LaMarche is the narrator, and he is absolutely fantastic. None of the other roles are particularly worth writing home about.

One major gripe I had with this film is how the racoons so nonchalantly killed the (human) construction workers and couldn't even show respect at their funerals. How am I supposed to feel sorry for these flippant, irreverent animals when their homes are being destroyed and when they're dying later on in the film?

If they removed all the scrotum gags and the hand-wringing environmentalist ********, this would be a very short and cute family film. Unfortunately, because of this, it just falls into the middle ground and has no possible target audience in this country (aside from the super-otaku). I would certainly not show this film to a child, and no adult would take it seriously.