What? Boring? This was FANTASTIC! Really, really loved it!

Ponyo is The Little Mermaid filtered through Miyazaki's amazing imagination, but also gets rid of the sexist elements of the original fairy tale by making it about a 5-year-old's pure platonic love, and not taking the fish girl's voice away. It would in fact be pretty easy to miss the connection between the two stories, as Ponyo reinvents even the image of the mermaid. It's a beautiful and charming film filled with magic, and its underwater world is entrancing, though Miyazaki never lets us forget how polluted we've made it (without beating the pulpit). And then there's the port town of the surface world, which is just as distinctive and memorable - is it me or did the bit where the mom races away from the the waves on a curving road inspire a similar sequence in the Aquaman movie? Irrepressibly cute, it's a feast for the eyes and for the soul.

It's mostly for children, but Miyazaki makes it difficult not to love anyway.