My Neighbor Totoro

The Younger Son and I watched My Neighbor Totoro this afternoon during lunch. It's a 1988 Miyazaki anime film. We watched the English dubbed Disney version. It's amusing. We want a Totoro to live here, and now we understand why The Cat is such a sullen cranky beast at times -she's a failed bus. It's sad to think that she aimed so high and fell so low, but we have more sympathy for her now that we've seen what she wanted to be.

trailer:

You can watch the entire film online if you're willing to download veoh's player. Not me. Never again.

Roger Ebert includes it on his list of "Great Movies" and has a lot of praise for it, including this: "The new Anime Encyclopedia calls it the best Japanese animated film ever made. Whenever I watch it, I smile, and smile, and smile." Moria gives it high marks and calls it "one of Hayao Miyazaki’s best films." The New York Times has a mixed review. Variety doesn't care for it. DecentFilms.com calls it "among the gentlest and most enchanting family films ever made" and says it's

like how childhood memories feel, if you had a happy childhood — wide-eyed and blissful, matter-of-factly magical and entrancingly prosaic, a world with discovery lurking around every corner and an inexhaustible universe in one’s backyard.