The Secret World of Arrietty (Kari-gurashi no Arietti - 2010)

As a fan of The Borrowers books I loved this Japanese animé feature dubbed into English (Jack liked it too). The Borrowers are 4-inch-tall people who live under the floorboards of houses and subsist on what they can borrow from their human "bean" hosts. With pictures like Impressionist paintings, ethereal music, and a plot a little short (ha!) on humor but true to the spirit of the children's storybooks by Mary Norton (I read and still have the first two), it's quite entertaining. Our version is at least the third of this marketing coup: released first in Japanese (the title literally translates to The Borrower Arrietty), then dubbed with famous British voice actors for release over there, and again here with voices by Bridgit Mendler (19) as Arrietty, David Hendrie (22) as the human Sean who befriends her, Amy Poehler and Will Arnett (married in real life) as Arrietty's parents, and Carol Burnett as the mean housekeeper. Poehler's voice is the hardest to pin down, as she has affected an accent worlds away from her voice on Parks & Recreation and Saturday Night Live. Arnett's baritone is unmistakeable, as is Burnett's nasal delivery. Disney had a hand in the English version.

There was a live action version, The Borrowers (1997), a raucous comedy with John Goodman and Jim Broadbent as the mean real estate developer and the Borrower dad. I liked that, too, but this is very different, with a Japanese style similar to Sprited Away (2001) and Howl's Moving Castle (2004), on which director Hiromasa Yonebayashi worked as an animator. Co-writer Hayao Miyazaki won an Oscar for Spirited Away and also adapted the novel for Howl's Moving Castle, among his many credits. Co-writer Keiko Niwa has collaborated with Miyazaki on two other animated features.

The music, by Frenchwoman Cécile Corbel (her film debut), whose Celtic-influenced style contributes much to the mood, is lovely. Here's a short suite. The track Arrietty's Song has been re-recorded into many languages which you can find on youtube. For a change, the entire song listing is on imdb, and the album and DVD are available on amazon in the U.K. Over here, one can only buy an imported CD, and the DVD hasn't been released for netflix yet. You're better off seeing it on the big screen while it's in your neighborhood!