From the script’s Wagnerian character names to Joe Hisaishi’s burletta-inspired score and the various “Fantasia”-like underwater sequences that Miyazaki draws with a degree of love and invention that he usually reserves for the skies, “Ponyo” is animated Zauberoper that feels like it has as much in common with Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” or Janácek’s “The Cunning Little Vixen” as it does any of its director’s other movies.
Yes, “Ponyo” is about a big-eyed fish girl who escapes to the surface and develops a ham addiction so intense that it threatens to destabilize our entire planet, but the maximalist simplicity of Miyazaki’s pencil-thin story allows the movie’s operatic undertow to form into a tidal wave. From the script’s Wagnerian character names to Joe Hisaishi’s burletta-inspired score and the various “Fantasia”-like underwater sequences that Miyazaki draws with a degree of love and invention that he usually reserves for the skies, “Ponyo” is animated Zauberoper that feels like it has as much in common with Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” or Janácek’s “The Cunning Little Vixen” as it does any of its director’s other movies.