The Cat Returns won't transport you through the same rapturous plains as Studio Ghibli's best films such as Spirited Away or Ponyo. But within its perfunctory whimsy and mild charms, lies a film which is, more than occasionally, a fully functional animated delight.
And like most of the studio's films, it brings you a pre-packaged universe of immeasurable imagination. Here, it's the Kingdom of the Cats; this is where our heroine Haru is taken, after performing a good deed for a moggy in distress. After rescuing the cat from what would have surely been death under the wheels of a lorry, she is rewarded by an invitation to a feline alternate reality. Although always a fan of cats since young, she soon is choking on her words as she finds herself in an arranged marriage to cat royalty, and sprouting whiskers of her own.
It's consistently odd, but it doesn't have the sly or nasty edge of the best work out of Ghibli's Hayuzi Miyazaki-directed animation. The gorgeous backdrops of Princess Mononoke are missing, and the characterisation of Howl's Moving Castle isn't here. The ambition is also somewhat tempered, as the movie nestles into a comforting groove of likeable craziness.
But we'd rather have the crags and blemishes of this comforting groove, than the much-furrowed safety of the latest Dreamworks, Pixar-lite creation.
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