Change Your Image
Maevyn
Reviews
Majo no takkyûbin (1989)
A disappointment
This movie starts out with an excellent premise: a young witch named Kiki, following the ancient tradition of her kind, leaves her home for one year to train to be a full witch, and find her special skill. Her mom, for instance, is a healing witch. But all Kiki knows is flying, and everyone can do that! She must brave the outside world and find herself in order to become a full-blooded respectable witch. Sounds good, right? Well, it would be, if the script wasn't awful. The plot then goes into her flying delivery service way too much, and not enough into interesting things. Also, apparently most people believe in witches. Wouldn't it be more interesting if her witchitude was a source of problems between her and her new society? Worse, she is barely a witch, because there is no training, no finding of a new skill, barely any discussion of other witches, nada. There's also no 3-dimensional characters, almost nothing deep, enthralling, or unexpected, and NO REASON TO LIKE KIKI AS AN INDIVIDUAL!!! She's a happy-go-lucky bumbling 13-year-old girl, until she comes upon a friend who happens to be a boy her age, and then she acts like a cold-hearted shrew. Everything that should go wrong does, and everything that should go right does. Plus there are WAY too many shots of her underwear for a G-rated movie. Has Kiki never heard of wearing shorts under her witch's gown?! The only reason I did not give this movie a 1 is because the drawings are lovely. Oh, by the way, this must be set in France. It's never stated, but there is no way in H-E-double-hockey-sticks that this is set in Japan.
The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986)
An Affront to an Excellent Book!
I have seen this movie and I have read the novel that it is based on. Let me make this clear: this movie does not hold a candle to the book! Jean M. Auel's novel is a great piece of prehistorical fiction, and my personal favorite book (and it's in competition with books like "Huckleberry Finn," "Jane Eyre," and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"). I know that movies based on books are rarely as good as said book, but this is intense. The movie cuts, adds, changes, and mish-mashes things together, all of which is at a detriment to the story line (I know some part of that is grammatically incorrect). The movie loses all the depth and subtlety of Ms. Auel's novel, and it miscasts Darryl Hannah. Don't get me wrong, she's a fine actress, but she was also way to old to play the leading character. If you are interested in the plot or premise of the movie, read the book instead. Your braincells will thank you.