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Buena Vista Home Entertainment pushes ahead with its regular releases of Studio Ghibli anime. This month, two films by director Isao Takahata are being offered: Pom Poko and My Neighbors The Yamadas. A substantial departure from Takahata's more serious animated films (Grave of the Fireflies and Memories of Teardrops), The Yamadas is lighthearted and consistently amusing. It is also a substantial departure in visual style, inspired by the media from which it was derived.
The Yamadas is an adaptation of a popular Japanese newspaper comic strip created and drawn by Hisaichi Ishii. Imagine a feature length motion picture composed of short vignettes, carefully edited together to represent the various foibles found in this contemporary and universal family, all based on characters and situations published in minimalist styled comic panels. I can only speculate that Hisaichi Ishii is a gentle soul with a clever sense of humor, the Charles M. Schulz of the Far East.
The family structure could have been inspired by The Simpsons . Takashi (SNL alum James Belushi) is the father who comes home from work each day and wants only to be pampered. Matsuko (SNL alum Molly Shannon) is the dedicated and loving wife and mother who patiently tolerates her family's idiosyncrasies. Noboru (Spy Kids alum Daryl Sabara) is the preadolescent son who'd rather be playing video games than study. Like Lisa Simpson, his younger sister, Nonoko (Liliana Mumy), is more conscientious. There's a pet dog and even a grandparent, but this elder isn't the brunt of family derision; grandmother Shige (Tress MacNeille) lives with the family and is a fount of wisdom and exhibits considerable strength of character.
The family lives in a modest little home in the suburbs and it is here and in its environs that we enjoy their wonderfully droll interactions. Takahata cleverly avoids trying to shoehorn existing characters that normally provide their comical payoffs in four or five panels into a more structured three-act film with a prolonged story arc. Instead, the film is structured more closely to its origins. The Yamadas is organized into several sections. Narrator David Ogden Stiers introduces each with a pithy example of minimalist Japanese poetry or Haiku. We're then treated to what appears to be a series of seamless animated vignettes that represent individual strips. Although they vary in length, the delightful advantage of this structure is that the giggles come regularly and frequently.
I was particularly amused by how delightfully the Japanese culture is integrated into the humor. For example, the battle over the TV's remote control seems to transcend national boundaries, but in this film it becomes a mock battle between two masters of the martial arts. Very clever indeed.
The filmmakers' artistic decisions are consistent with the movie's origins as well. With the exception of an interesting sequence involving three miscreants on noisy motorcycles and motorbikes, the background is consistently white or a very pale pastel. The drawings are simplistic and minimalist in style. Coloration is in subtle, much like watercolors. Even the lines of the drawings are in gray rather than black.
You are literally watching an animated comic strip, and it works. I was consistently charmed and entertained. But the structure has nowhere to go. How does one end such a collection of amusing little shorts? And as the film wound down, it let me down. I will not speculate on the stereotype of Japanese fondness for karaoke. I will simply offer that I suspect that karaoke was the inspiration for an out-of-place climactic production number set to ìQue Sera Seraî sung by the cast. But I will not allow a lapse of a few minutes during a 104-minute film that otherwise amused to affect my recommendation. This is a delightful release.
The Video: How Does The Disc Look?
The film's theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 is presented in anamorphic video. The transfer and compression work for this release is virtually flawless. Halos are not visible. The subtle coloration is painted to the screen with warmth and without a hint of chroma noise or smearing. Shadow detail is not an issue. Small object detail is exceptional. Finely grained textures are not part of the content, so they are not an issue. I didn't notice any macroblocking or mosquito noise. I'm going to speculate that there is so much duplicate data in each frame (the light backgrounds), that very little compression was necessary. I don't really care. This disc looks great.
The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?
The Dolby Digital 5.1 track is quite nice. It is predominantly front centric. This is, after all, a dialog driven film. The surrounds occasionally kick in with a directional effects or environmental sounds. Deep bass is neither present nor missed. Sound effects simply serve the images. There is a wonderfully jazzy score that features the piano and several instances of classical music elements; the fidelity is unusually good, exhibiting a transparency that I don't usually associate with the lossy audio format of Dolby Digital. The looped and dryly recorded voice work is crystal clear and presented with a pleasant sense of presence.
The alternate language is in Japanese. Optional subtitles are in English, English for the Hearing Impaired, and, there are English Closed Captions. I think English is pretty much covered, don't you?
Supplements: What Goodies Are There?
The disc opens with preprogrammed previews for five Hayao Miyazaki films: Howl's Moving Castle (you'll have to wait until spring of 2006 for that one), and the available DVDs for The Cat Returns, Porco Rosso, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and Spirited Away, and a Disney classic, Cinderella Special Edition (7:43 aggregate). They may be skipped.
The disc's featurette is the full screen Behind The Microphone (5:31); it's a pleasant little glimpse of the voice talent that participated in the English dub of the film. Nothing very informative. EPK level of thoroughness.
Trailers (16:09) is not what you might expect. This is a collection of special trailers for the feature film, including the promotional film and an early trailer in rough animation that may have been used to sell the concept. There are then two theatrical trailers and some TV spots.
The last supplement is a collection of Original Japanese Storyboards, organized into the same number of chapters as the feature. They are small and hard to see.
The 104-minute film is organized into twenty chapters.
Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens when you pop the disc into your PC?
There are no DVD-ROM features on this DVD.
Final Thoughts
This is a charming film that is both funny and touching. The filmmakers convey the genuine underlying love in the Yamada household that is undiminished by the bickering and funny situations. The transfer is fabulous, the audio track is excellent, and the modest supplements are, well, modest. Recommended.
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