No debunking of the Miyazaki cult here! Yes, Dana, please do report back about how your daughter fares when you take her to Ponyo. That dilemma of a few scary moments plagues me, as a parent, for so many kids' movies. As a fellow worshipper, though, I assume Miyazaki puts them to good and necessary use here.

Your strategy of talking through the story line and the harrowing bits beforehand is a great one. It saved us from serious meltdown when my husband and I let my 6-year-old son Simon finish the first Star Wars trilogy, by watching The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, as many readers urged us to do after I wrote about his Star Wars obsession.

This whole question of how to handle scariness in movies and DVDs is part of why we started our section for reviewing kids' fare, XXtra Small. I'd love to hear from readers about what you think of the ratings we devised.

Image from Ponyo courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures.

Tags: hayao miyazaki, ponyo, xxtra small

Emily, when I saw the title of your last post ("Worshipping at the Shrine of Hayao Miyazaki"), I was afraid you meant it sarcastically, and that you were going to debunk the cult of the great Japanese anime director. If you had, I would've had no response except, "Gee, I can't help it if it's trendy to swoon over his work—I just do. "It's nice to hear that you and your kids are also unironically floored by Miyazaki's exuberant imagination (and as a parent who's watched at least part of My Neighbor Totoro nearly every day for the past year, it's helpful to have a guide to which of his movies comes next in the growing-up cycle.)

Your question about what age his latest movie, Ponyo, would be right for is one I'm actively struggling with right now. While I was watching it, my pleasure was augmented tenfold by the image of my 3-year-old daughter flipping out as all of her favorite things (Magical transformations! Iridescent bubbles! Swimming! Brave girls performing heroic rescues! Queens of the sea with long flowing pink hair!) came together in one glorious rainbow-hued bundle. Honestly, I think if she saw this movie she might disintegrate from pure joy. But I can't decide whether the scary parts, which include personified ocean waves with angry eyes, a moment when a child is left alone to fend for himself during a flood, and at least two near-deaths of the main character, would be too much for her or not. I sat her down at my computer last night to watch some Ponyo trailers, hoping to gauge how frightening those images were, but in her excitement at the prospect of getting to see a movie at a real theater, she waved away any possible downside (yep, she's her mother's daughter all right). I think I'm going to risk it and just take her this weekend, after recounting the whole story a few times so she knows that (spoiler alert!) the titular fish-girl and her loved ones make it through to the end just fine. I'll report back and let you know whether my own fish-girl does the same.

Tags: hayao miyazaki, movies for kids, My Neighbor Totoro, ponyo

Reading Dana's lovely and whimsical review of Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki's new film Ponyo—which itself sounds lovely and whimsical—I swelled with gratitude for his sui generis filmmaking and the way he seriously applies it to children's themes. When we discovered Miyazaki through his film for young children, My Neighbor Totoro, I felt like I'd walked through the Disney looking glass into a world of animation that would actually make my kids see their own surroundings differently. Later we discovered Kiki's Delivery Service, the coming-of-age tale of a kid witch, which is my all-time favorite kids' movie. One of the things I love about Miyazaki is that you can move through his movies as your children get older. Castle in the Sky is good for my 6-year-old and 9-year-old, and so is Princess Mononoke, but Howl's Moving Castle looks a few years off, and we haven't gotten to Spirited Away yet either. (Here's a primer with more on the films.) Dana, you say that Ponyo may be too intense for young kids, even though your 3-year-old daughter got the plot right away. (Your great summary: "Boy meets fish-girl, boy loses fish-girl, fish-girl risks upsetting the cosmic order to get boy back.") If you have a chance, tell us more—what kind of kid at what age might the new movie work for? I'm especially keen to take my kids because it sounds like the movie complicates the message of environmentalism that is often shoveled at them as dogma.

Photograph of Hayao Miyazaki and Noah Cyrus, a Ponyo cast member, by Kristian Dowling/Getty Images.

Tags: hayao miyazaki, ponyo

Deep in the hottest, doggiest days of summer, Disney is bringing audiences a refreshing treat: Ponyo, the latest film from legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.

Ponyo is the story of a spunky little goldfish who falls in love with a human boy and, after getting her fins on some of her father's magic elixir, turns herself into a little girl. Little does she know, that act is about to throw the entire natural world out of whack ... (Watch the trailer here.)

In its relative simplicity, and with its very young protagonists, Ponyo reminds me more of Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro—one of my favorite movies of all time, kids' or otherwise—than his more recent fare, like Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away. But that doesn't make it any less appealing for adults: At the recent screening I went to, both kids and grown-ups were beaming as they left the theater. And as far as Disney princesses go—Ponyo is the daughter of a wizard and the goddess of the sea, so whatever, she totally counts—Ponyo's generosity, fearlessness, and awesome powers put her in a class of her own. Just try not to be thrilled as Ponyo, exhilarated by her new legs and feet, scampers over fat, cresting tidal waves to reach her beloved Sosuke, pumping her little arms and shouting with laughter the whole way.

Bonus! Tina Fey provides the voice of the boy's mother, and she's pretty fantastic.

Ponyo opens on Friday.

Image courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures.

Tags: Disney, hayao miyazaki, ponyo, Tina Fey