A “borrower” named Arrietty becomes friends with a human named Shō after he goes to spend the summer in his mother’s childhood home.
Known as The Borrower Arrietty in Japan, Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s feature-film debut contains many of the fantasy hallmarks of Studio Ghibli while lacking some of the magic of the work of its masters. It tells a variation on a tale that’s common across cultures, that of tiny people living alongside average human beings, in this case “borrowing” what they need and trying to stay undetected. A “borrower” named Arrietty becomes friends with a human named Shō after he goes to spend the summer in his mother’s childhood home. The adaptation of British writer Mary Norton’s The Borrowers feels a bit slight on a story level, but this is a case in which the production elevates the material. Yonebayashi and his team use perspective in a way that makes the ordinary seem extraordinary, giving the whole experience the sheen of a classic fairy tale. It is bursting with imaginative visuals, even if they sometimes seem to overwhelm the story and characters.