Tales From Earthsea Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

Tales from Earthsea

I enjoy Studio Ghibli films, and I liked Le Guins Earthsea books, but I found this film was sorely lacking in both areas.

The books do have a wandering pace, and perhaps that doesn't translate into film that well, but the characters weren't this wooden. Scenes crawled by with rather clumsy animation - for Ghibli - and almost no explaination of anything; just when a revelation is to be revealed, it is cut and we are left with no answers and a lot more agriculture. Most of it felt like, Ah, this is actually kinda scary and threatening, what are the characters going to do now? Oh never mind, we have more ploughing to do...

Even the heart-felt song mid-way through felt torturously long and tedious.

If you love Ghibli, you'll probably get something from it, but the animation is not up to their standards.

If you love Earthsea and Sparrowhawk, I suggest you leave it alone. There are flashes of the book's intentions and 'I remember when this happened' moments (which speak more like 'this is based on a book you know') not to mention Sparrowhawk himself does virtually nothing.

I hope one day someone makes a proper rendition of Ursula's books, this and the sci-fi channel's poor attempt just use and abuse them. Either that or she just stops giving people the rights to them.

Customer Review

I really enjoy the Studio Ghibli films for their rich animation and fun stories.

This had some of the aspects I have come to expect, but it is not the best I have seen.

Being new to the Earthsea world, I felt the story seemed to be a bit rushed at the beginning - but also there were a lot of slow moving parts later on in the film which didn't seem to add much. Despite this, there were some beautifully animated moments.

Definitely worth a watch if you are a Studio Ghibli fan.