Reviews

I know Limmy has fans on the Internet. I hadn't heard of him before and didn't get round to trying the show until episode four. In five minutes I found it completely incomprehensible. After a quarter of an hour the star of the show came on and announced that it has come to his attention that some of the audience think his show is (a word that the IMDb won't let me use). He said that it was because we were thinking about it too much. The previous sketch was based on a very old joke—where do all the socks go that are mysteriously half pairs, ha-ha-ha?—and that is a result of the writer not thinking enough. He then continued with more jokes and stories that were not funny. I transcribe below a bit of the wit from Limmy's Show for reference. A chippy in Scotland, perhaps Glasgow. The camera shows Limmy's point of view as the woman behind the counter serves his chips and puts vinegar on them. Another man comes in: Other Man: Is there a toilet in here? Limmy: You're a toilet. Woman behind counter: There's a toilet, but it isnae working. Limmy: You're a toilet. Other man exits. The camera, representing Limmy, follows him down the street. The other man goes into a pub and through to the Gents. Limmy follows him and sees which cubicle he has gone into. From his point of view we see him pick up a wodge of paper towels, put them in the urinal, and urinate on them copiously. He goes into the cubicle next to the one the other man is using, and hurls the urine-soaked paper towels over the division, then runs to the toilet entrance and waits till the other man comes out of the cubicle, screaming in disgust. Limmy: You're a toilet. As far as I'm concerned, the Internet can keep him.

This film is intended for small children, so Miyazaki says. I was thirty-six when I watched it. I was so charmed that I showed it again to my father, who was then seventy-seven. He was so charmed that he insisted we must show it to his grandson, who is four. I have seen more exciting films, or funnier films, but none which gave me more sheer delight. It is a great shame the world isn't really as nice as this, but when you are four, like Mei, or even eleven, like Satsuki, this is how you want it to be: everyone bigger is kind and can be trusted completely, and everything always comes right in the end. Knowing a little boy of Mei's age I can vouch for her being highly realistic, from the obsessive looking through a hole in a bucket to the scowling and sulking! The most touching moment is when Catbus' destination board changes to "MEI", showing Satsuki that he knows exactly where her little sister is, and that he's going to take her straight there. My only criticisms, if you can call them that, are that the DVD doesn't contain the legendary sequel "Mei and the Kittenbus", in which Mei meets and goes for a ride with Catbus's little son, and that I can't ride in Catbus myself. As a cat lover and occasional bus user I feel I was born to do that, and it's a disgrace he's only imaginary!

As a hopeless cat-lover, I was very annoyed by the Hollywood film "Cats and Dogs", in which cats are portrayed as the evil geniuses to be foiled by dogs, and I wished there was a film which could redress the balance. This is it, I think. It was made by one of the other directors at Studio Ghibli, not Hayao Miyazaki, and it doesn't have the depth of meaning and feeling that I associate with his work, but this is not really a criticism. It IS enormous fun! It made me laugh a lot, many times, and the cats, though they walk on two legs and are anthropomorphised, are very realistic. I used to have a huge, crabby, lovable old cat very like Muta, and I loved every minute he was on. (Don't worry—he recovers from his overdose of catnip jelly.) It's a great look at the world from a feline perspective, exciting in a Douglas Fairbanks way, cute without being twee, and always amusing. If you don't like cats, or are indifferent to them, you might not care for it, but I think every imaginative cat lover should watch it!

Of the true Ghibli films I have seen so far, this is my least favourite—which is to say only that it's better than most ordinary films, rather than being astonishing. It has the usual beauty and attention to detail (somewhere there's a bus with an advertisement for "Studio Ghibli" on the side), with likable and interesting characters, but by comparison with other films such as "Laputa: Castle in the Sky", "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" and "The Cat Returns" I felt that the story was rather thin and erratic. I suspect this is because it is an adaptation of a book or books, which means inevitably things being cut out. Some of the incidents, such as the delivery of the "toy cat" to the little boy or the meal to the rich, surly girl, didn't seem to relate to anything else in the larger pattern of the story, and it ended with a rather perfunctory suspense scene in which I found myself getting annoyed with Kiki because instead of going below Tombo to rescue him, so that if he fell she would catch him easily, she insisted on going alongside him so that he had to reach out! I can't, of course, view this film with the eyes of an eight-year-old, as it's nearly thirty years too late, and as some reviewers on Amazon have said it may simply be a film for children, not adults. Nevertheless, this doesn't apply to "Laputa", "Nausicaä", "The Cat Returns", or even "My Neighbour Totoro", which is intended for toddlers. In summary, then, perhaps a film all children will love, but not so good for adults.

Jennifer Lopez, who is Hollywood's current favourite for the most beautiful, sexy and desirable woman in the world, is in some kind of accident and is saved by a doctor played by Matthew McConaughey who is, surprisingly enough, young, handsome, clever and brave. Of course they instantly fall in love with each other. However, it so happens that Matthew McConaughey is engaged to someone else, and what is more, this other woman has engaged Jennifer Lopez to plan her wedding! What are we to do? It goes without saying that true love must have its destiny, however improbable, and just to underline that they are made for each other we have another contrived scene in which Matthew McConaughey has to rescue J-Lo from a bolting horse. On their return I was interested in the posture they chose to come home. Usually when people ride two up on a horse they do it as pillion riders do on a motorbike, one behind the other. In this case, however, J-Lo was sitting in front of Matthew McConaughey, entirely blocking his view, but giving her the chance to sit on his *****, which is much more important. I wondered how they would resolve it, since as the heroine J-Lo could hardly just pinch someone else's bridegroom, because she has to be a sympathetic character. In the end they thought of a very simple solution: Matthew McConaughey's girlfriend just decided she didn't want to marry him after all, so that was all right. Do you see?

****ARGUABLY CONTAINS SPOILERS**** "The Reflecting Skin" is a contemplative, arty piece, beautifully filmed, set in rural Great Plains America in the 1950s, and it is one of the most unspeakably repulsive films I have ever seen-far more so than The Exorcist, or indeed Reservoir Dogs. The opening sequence has four horrid boys setting upon a frog and inflating it with a straw up its arse so that it becomes a living balloon, lying on its back wriggling faintly and trying to croak but unable to move. Then they hide. Anon a woman comes walking along the road. She sees the crippled frog and bends down to look at it. One of the boys shoots a stone at it from his catapult, and the frog explodes, spraying her face with blood and entrails. As she leaps back with a cry of disgust, they all run away laughing. Thus the first five minutes. It is ten years or more since I saw it, and I do not want to watch it again, but a list of the other repulsive things I saw in it would include: a young man dying of radiation sickness, with his hair falling out; a gang of murderous pædophiles stalking the country in their limousine, inviting trusting young boys into the car, taking them off, raping and murdering them, and dumping their bodies; the boy who is the central character being punished by his mother for talking in his bedroom after bedtime by being force-fed water until he wets himself; a man committing suicide at his petrol station by pouring petrol all over himself, even drinking it, then striking a match; and a rotting aborted fotus dumped in a barn being mistaken for an `angel' by the central character, who takes it home and talks to it, asking its advice. It is true that it looks beautiful, but it's also true that it has essentially no plot and merely comes across-at least to me-as an attempt by the writer and director to cram as many nasty things as possible into the running time without compromising its good looks. I suppose the lesson is `Look, even in the quiet countryside where you thought nothing ever happens, life is utterly rotten.' I can't help feeling, though, that this isn't a particularly profound lesson. I see from the notes left that other people have enjoyed it, but for my part I'm sorry I watched it: the only benefit I drew from the experience was learning not to watch it again if it's ever repeated.