A children’s film, well as long as it’s not Watership Down (see previous post), is usually heartfelt, charming and full of whimsy and wonder. Japan’s Studio Ghibli has been making films for over forty years and they’re still going strong even if their last film was a beautiful mess and their best director is in his eighties. Play to your strengths I can understand, coming out of retirement because your company can’t work properly without you less so.

Studio Ghibli started off making marvellous fairytales before moving into stories more grounded in reality. ‘Whisper of the Heart’ is about a boy and a girl trying to encourage each other’s gifts, the former a violin-maker and the latter a writer. Shizuku discovers a figurine in an antique store called the Baron, an anthropomorphic cat dressed in a snazzy white suit, and decides to write a story about him.

As a statue he looks mischievous and playful. When he’s later animated in her dreams, he’s suave and has the benefit of being voiced by Cary Elwes.

I recently learned that a live action version of the film had been made a few years ago. When I caught a glimpse of the front of the blu ray I almost choked on my sandwich. The statue of the Baron has unfortunately been upgraded from mischievous to downright murderous.

He now has the look of a psychopath and, yes, he will cut your fingers off for a laugh and mail them to you at work.