For those whose appetites for Japanese anime don’t stop at Studio Ghibli, Masaaki Yuasa’s “Lu Over the Wall” goes not just over the wall, but pinwheeling through the neighbor’s garden and practically into another dimension — but then, what else would you expect from the director of 2004’s deranged “Mind Game”? If anything, “Lu” feels tame by comparison, although by traditional cartoon standards, this far-fetched, wildly imaginative (and 100% unofficial) riff on Hayao Miyazaki’s “Ponyo” — which was itself a loose reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” — puts a zany spin on the old boy-meets-mergirl formula, where a magical sea creature is beckoned ashore by the sound of a mopey rocker’s emo music.
Whereas Miyazaki’s universally accessible “Ponyo” felt like it was targeted at toddlers, “Lu” skews older, appealing more directly to adolescent and adult viewers willing to have their minds blown by the title creature’s supernatural shenanigans.
Whereas Miyazaki’s universally accessible “Ponyo” felt like it was targeted at toddlers, “Lu” skews older, appealing more directly to adolescent and adult viewers willing to have their minds blown by the title creature’s supernatural shenanigans.
- 5/11/2018
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
"Everyone, friends! Everyone, friends!" GKids has released the Us trailer for the extremely cute, Japanese anime musical Lu Over the Wall, which won Grand Prize at the prestigious Annecy Animation Festival, and played at the London Film Festival last year. From Japanese anime filmmaker Masaaki Yuasa (Mind Game, "Devilman: Crybaby"), this "joyously hallucinogenic" film is about a lonely, awkward musician boy in a small Japanese town on the water. One day he meets and befriends a mermaid who loves to dance to the music he creates with his band. This sets off all kinds of problems in the village, where they're afraid that mermaids bring disaster. The voice cast includes Kanon Tani, Shôta Shimoda, Shin'ichi Shinohara, and Akira Emoto. However, the Us release is an English dubbed version, for those thinking of seeing this. I caught this film in London and did not like it at all, very messy and incoherent and way too long.
- 3/29/2018
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
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