Year:
1989
Studio:
Tokuma Shoten
Feature:
4/5
DVD:
2/5
Kiki's Delivery Service
is a Japanese animated feature, professionally dubbed with good
American actors for the statewide release. It is the coming-of-age
story of Kiki (Kirsten Dunst), a 13-year old witch trainee. Witches in
this world are kindly women who adopt a city and provide their
services. At 13 a young witch leaves home to spend a year on her own.
Kiki arrives at a coastal French-looking city. She comes from the
country so has trouble adjusting to the big city. But she meets friends
who help her, from Osono (Tress MacNeille) the matronly baker to Ursula
(Janeane Garofalo) the painter. And she has her cat Jiji (Phil Hartman)
who provides advice and friendly companionship. Jiji is the best
character in the film -- the way he's drawn and the way he acts are
quite precious.
Anyway, so Kiki has to make a living and since her only good witch
skill is flying on her broom she decides to start a delivery service.
Meanwhile a young lad, Tombo (Matthew Lawrence) becomes infatuated with
the witch, mostly because she can fly and he's fascinated by the
concept of flight.
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The story focuses on Kiki's
fledging business and the people she meets and trying to fit in a new
city. After a while the big crisis comes when Kiki starts losing her
powers and with that loses her confidence. It's only when Tombo is
stuck on a runaway Zepellin that Kiki regains her confidence and her
flying abilities.
The film is marvelously well drawn. The characters and background are
in constant motion with little repetition, obviously a lot of effort
was put into animation. The voice acting is great, with Dunst and
Hartman bringing distinctive personalities to their characters. It's a
story that is aimed at a younger audience yet I still found it
relatively interesting.
Although it's a 2-DVD set, there really aren't any special features.
Disk 2 has the whole film's audio track but with the storyboards
instead of the final animation. The first DVD has a 5-minute featurette
with the voice actors and 20-minutes of Japanese commercials for the
film.
Kiki's Delivery Service
is a good childrens story with fine animation and no sex, no violence,
nothing that people would find objectionable -- except for
witch-haters. It's a well-done film all around and heartily recommended.
What I Liked: Jiji
What I Didn't Like: It's a slow-paced story.
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