Save your money for something good and enjoyable

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Best movie ever!

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

I first saw some of this Ghibli film two years ago. I liked what I saw but also noticed that some of the people watching it either thought it was meh or liked it. Curious, I had to finish the film, hoping to think the contrary but as a seventeen-year-old, I found this generic and unappealing. I get that it's supposed to be a more realistic Ghibli film that focuses on teens not liking each other until a romance blooms, like Whisper of the Heart but even I can't forgive the generic characters, the pointless story, and the inconsistent script.It's good that Goro at least tried to make a good film and it's a big improvement from the boring Tales from Earthsea but this film still felt too slow and rushed.

One of the main characters says at one moment that he felt like he was "in a cheap drama", and he wasn't wrong. The movie has funny, exciting and overall enjoyable scenes, and there are interesting points in the plot, but they are all wasted to nothing. The story has nothing of Hayao Miyazaki's depth and humanity and is, therefore, hardly touching. Which is a shame coming from Ghibli, specially because it could have been otherwise with a little more effort. But except for the bleak and cheapish story, it is an OK flick to watch your time slipping quickly by, and not coming back.IMDb doesn't let me publish a review so short, so let me add one positive thing (though not much necessary): usually Ghibli's films are quite conservative when it comes to romantic relationships, this film tries to make the girl a little less submissive and embarrassed than the usual, which is a big plus for me, but it doesn't really chase it to the end, it just rather "suggests" it and that's it. The same goes to other positive points in the plot, none of them are developed, they are only hinted at (why? the film is short after all, there was time to improve it). The story is such a cheap trick that one wonders what happened to the idealism seen in the other animations from Ghibli.

From Up on Poppy Hill is all about looking to the past and seeing if something is ahead in the future that will stay the same (or not, as case usually turns out to be). There are really two stories in what is kind of a simple story that completely lacks anything really to do with fantasy - there's one dream sequence but it would probably look the same if it were live action - though that's not any kind of negative, per-say. The film takes place in 1963 and is about the concurrent stories surrounding young Umi (Rachel Bolger in the English version) and Shun (Anton Yelchin) as they discover new/revealing things about their respective paternal lineages and some drama about whether their local school, uh, center or something (full of every department imaginable like a giant complex) will be torn down or not.This is also all in light of the upcoming 64 Tokyo Olympics, which was a major deal at the time signifying a corner turning for the Japanese people following reconstruction in the post-war years. The film's (co) written by Hayao Miyazaki and directed by his son Goro, and the whole tone of the film is very sweet and gentle, and sometimes funny in that way that catches you off guard with Ghibli works (a lot of it comes with some of the goofy/dopey moments inside of the giant extra-curricular school-place), and it has something to say about the nature of looking to the past and trying to hold on to a certain image. For the teens at the core - who, of course, fall in love because it's that time of their lives and they are both nice, caring people, and that's good to see, genuinely, no really - they sort of acknowledge that this is almost a soap-like melodrama that's unfolding regarding new news about who their father(s) might be (all from a picture that Umi has and knocks Shun for a loop).I wondered though if simply acknowledging it was enough; the last 15 minutes of the film spins the wheels even more about who is really who and new revelations come and some suspense comes for Shun to find out news that is one-time-only or not at all. And yet this is still more compelling, all of the character stuff between Umi and Shun, than the storyline involving the school and what is basically the respectable version of the "save the Rec Center" plot from dance flicks (no, really, think about it if you see it). I didn't care about that story, despite some colorful side characters, and wanted to get back to the emotional core of this young couple that is shown very simply as becoming more attracted to one another but in a pure-hearted sort of way (it's Ghibli so the romance is chaste - which is good considering the reveals that come around!) I keep coming back to the word 'sweet' but there's no other word for it really; it's nowhere as sad as the recent When Marnie Was Here, but it has a similar take on the real world and how people look to the past to reconcile things that they can or cannot change. Also, subtlety is the key thing with the characters, how seemingly simple the reactions are at first but once you get keyed into them you see the animators doing little things to make them more endearing and heart-rending. I just wish Poppy Hill had a little more meat to its other story, and as it is it's so light that it's like a feather ready to blow off your finger. But since it's from one of the two or three giants in studio animation it's all the same a pleasure to watch, albeit one that I see isn't necessarily a repeat-viewing

In 1963 Yokohama, high school girl Umi puts out signal flags to passing ships, partly in remembrance of her captain father who died at sea. While getting involved with a project to save a local clubhouse, she meets and falls in love with fellow student Shun. But Shun's father was also lost at sea, and he carries the same photograph as Umi...This animated movie from Studio Ghibli has no fantasy elements: it is a simple drama with several intertwined threads. The animation is satisfactory without being dazzling, the backgrounds are lovely, and the film is, at times, very moving.I enjoyed it a lot.