Kiki's Delivery Service

[baumer]

Released at Seattle INTL film fest.

[Jack Nevada]

This movie is like a big hug. Lovely, absolutely lovely.5/5

[cannastop]

Being re released as a special event at the end of this month, and I want to watch it.

Edited July 21, 2019 by cannastop

[cannastop]

2 hours ago, MANILIYAT said:

Released at Seattle INTL film fest.

 

Uh, yeah that's where the English dub premiered in the 90s.

[cannastop]

This actually might be my favorite Hayao Miyazaki movie. It was disarmingly thoughtful and impeccably directed. Its theme might not be as strong as Princess Mononoke's or Spirited Away's, but that might be because Kiki's Delivery Service is based on material that Miyazaki didn't write. Then again, My Neighbor Totoro is also his original creation, and I'm a bit stuck there for a theme.

 

Just throwing out superlatives here: It's a shame that Hayao Miyazaki has never been nominated for a general directing award. Because he deserves it. In fact I think you could make an interesting case that all of his movies, in the years they were released, were the best movies of the year. (Except for Nausicaa, I personally don't like that one that much.)

 

There are just impeccable film-making moments in Kiki's Delivery Service. I don't quite have the vocabulary to describe them, though, but all of the blocking is perfect. So much is done with the resources that Studio Ghibli had, and I don't presume that Studio Ghibli had unlimited resources.

 

It's just so interesting that this is the material that Japanese audiences ate up in 1989, while America was in another reality altogether with Don Bluth and WDAS movies. Hayao Miyazaki, as a filmmaker, trounces them, of course. Why this is, I don't really know.

 

@Morieris

 

I heard this is your favorite too.

Edited July 28, 2019 by cannastop

[cannastop]

I noticed that for the dub of Kiki's Delivery Service I had, they had Japanese language songs in the opening and closing credits, which might not have been the case in some of the Disney Dub you had on VHS or DVD. They had a different song, sung by someone else. They didn't bring in new actors though, I just think GKIDS might have switched things up, to be more authentic to the original.

 

Also, Jiji, despite being a male cat, was voiced by a woman in the original Japanese, according to tradition. Similar to the situation where Moro was voiced by a male in the original Japanese despite being female. Phil Hartman was a good actor (Kiki's dub premiered a few days before he died), don't get me wrong. I just hear that they changed the dialogue from a straight translation of Hayao Miyazaki's script.

 

Makes me wonder if a certain off-color comment by Jiji was in the original Japanese. If I could watch the subtitled release, I might know.

[cannastop]

6 minutes ago, cannastop said:

I noticed that for the dub of Kiki's Delivery Service I had, they had Japanese language songs in the opening and closing credits, which might not have been the case in some of the Disney Dub you had on VHS or DVD. They had a different song, sung by someone else. They didn't bring in new actors though, I just think GKIDS might have switched things up, to be more authentic to the original.

 

Also, Jiji, despite being a male cat, was voiced by a woman in the original Japanese, according to tradition. Similar to the situation where Moro was voiced by a male in the original Japanese despite being female. Phil Hartman was a good actor (Kiki's dub premiered a few days before he died), don't get me wrong. I just hear that they changed the dialogue from a straight translation of Hayao Miyazaki's script.

 

Makes me wonder if a certain off-color comment by Jiji was in the original Japanese. If I could watch the subtitled release, I might know.

Wait wait, wikipedia has an answer for this.

 

However, when Disney re-released the film on DVD in 2010, several elements of the English dub were changed, reverting more towards the original Japanese version. Several of Hartman's ad-libbed lines as Jiji were removed, and Sydney Forest's opening and ending songs were replaced with the original Japanese opening and ending songs.^[51] Additionally, Jiji does not talk again at the end, implying that Kiki never regains the ability to talk to him, and many of the sound effects added to the original English version have been removed. The English subtitled script used for the original VHS subbed release and the later DVD release more closely adheres to the Japanese script, but still contains a few alterations. Tokuma mistakenly believed the Streamline dub was an accurate translation of the film and offered it to Disney to use as subtitles. As a result, several additions from the dub appear in the subtitles regardless of whether or not they are present in the film.^[52] 

[Morieris]

It's still my favorite Ghibli movie no matter how many of the others I've watched (which isn't a ton), yet I only own one on Blu Ray and it's not this.

 

They probably play the dubbed versions for Ghiblifest, don't they.

[cannastop]

3 hours ago, Morieris said:

It's still my favorite Ghibli movie no matter how many of the others I've watched (which isn't a ton), yet I only own one on Blu Ray and it's not this.

 

They probably play the dubbed versions for Ghiblifest, don't they.

Actually they played the 2010 version of the Disney dub, but they will play the subbed version Monday July 29th, which is tomorrow. At 7pm nationwide.

The subtitles might even be accurate this time, being from GKIDS.

 

That's too late in the evening for me to be there.

Edited July 29, 2019 by cannastop

[Rorschach]

Watched this yesterday for the first time at a Ghibli Fest screening. Far and away my new favorite Ghibli film. I absolutely adored this film from beginning to end! Its so warm and vibrant and it gave me a great feeling of ease and comfort watching it. The characters are all super charming and likable. They like real people and made me forget that they were just fictional characters in a movie. Of course, the animation is also super stunning and the way the film presented the city of Koriko was so breathtaking and beautiful (I wish I could live there!). Though the third act kind of devolves into familiar territory and feels tacked on as a result, I still found it very engaging and the way everything wrapped so nicely made me forgive it.

 

So yeah, to wrap it up, I think @Jack Nevada really put it into words for me:

On 3/6/2013 at 1:36 PM, Jack Nevada said:

This movie is like a big hug. Lovely, absolutely lovely. 5/5

 

 

[cannastop]

@Morieris

@Rorschach

WOO!

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=kiki30.htm

 

Kiki's Delivery Service:
30th Anniversary

 

Total Lifetime Grosses

Domestic:

$1,004,057

Edited August 5, 2019 by cannastop