(It's worth noting, too, that the movie fares quite well in its smaller, quieter sequences, with the vivid characters, both good and bad, perpetuating the persistently watchable atmosphere.) And although the 124 minute running time begins to wear on the viewer past a certain point, Castle in the Sky's energetic climactic stretch ensures that the film ends on a palpably high note - which confirms the movie's place as a better-than-average effort from Miyazaki. (Well, fast-paced by Miyazaki's otherwise excessively, interminably deliberate standards, anyway.) The typically overlong running time isn't, as a result, as problematic as one might've feared, as Miyazaki effectively peppers the proceedings with one exhilarating scene after another - including a fantastic bit involving an oversized robot. Miyazaki, working from his own screenplay, does a fantastic job of immediately grabbing the viewer's interest, as Castle in the Sky opens with an impressively engrossing action sequence set aboard an enormous airship - with the pre-credits set piece setting a fast-paced, Indiana Jones-like tone that proves impossible to resist. The inclusion of a few isolated stand-out sequences - eg Nausicaä rescues a pilot from an enormous flying insect - buoys one's interest every now and again, yet it's clear that the film, which grows more and more complicated and convoluted as time progresses, eventually becomes an exhausting, aggressively overlong piece of work that seems unlikely to appeal to the hardiest of animation aficionados.Īn unexpectedly thrilling adventure from Hayao Miyazaki, Castle in the Sky follows a pair of scrappy adolescents, Pazu and Sheeta, as they're thrust into a rip-roaring escapade involving pirates, secret agents, and, of course, the title locale. The movie's amiable (yet far-from-engrossing) atmosphere persists right up until Miyazaki starts emphasizing an almost unreasonable number of subplots and supporting characters, with the increasingly busy nature of the narrative resulting in a lack of momentum that holds the viewer at arm's length on an all-too-regular basis. There's little doubt that Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind fares best in its opening half hour, as Miyazaki does a superb job of transforming the open-hearted protagonist into a figure worth caring about and rooting for (although Nausicaä's penchant for talking to herself is admittedly a little ridiculous).

Hayao Miyazaki's second feature, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind follows the scrappy title character as she attempts to protect her people from a variety of outside sources - including oversized, toxic insects and vicious warriors known as the Tolmekians. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (March 9/11)

Miyazaki films