SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
While it’s not the studio’s most sophisticated work, Kiki’s Delivery Service remains a great children’s film, with plenty of charm, positivity and understated depth.
For those of you seeking an alternative to the typical loud and proud Disney films for your kids, or even if you’re seeking such a film for yourself, I have a suggestion that you should definitely consider. Kiki’s Delivery Service is a kinder, gentler type of film, a reminder that there’s more than one way to make excellent kids’ movies, and in true Studio Ghibli fashion, it has a surprising understated depth. As is frequently the case, both kids and adults will be able to take something away from this. That aside, even if you aren’t swept away by a powerful message about self-confidence and finding your place in the world, Kiki’s Delivery Service is beautifully animated positivity. It’s impossible not to get caught up in it.
Having flown away from home to start her year-in-training, the thirteen-year-old witch Kiki finds herself in the bustling coastal city of Koriko. Settling in with Osono, a friendly baker, she decides to start up her own courier service in order to earn a living, using her magic broomstick to make deliveries all around the city. Accompanied by her black cat Jiji on her adventures, Kiki soon begins to learn about how the world outside the small town she grew up in is really like, encountering new trials as she struggles to get her delivery business off the ground.
The first thing you notice about this film is how lush and vibrant it seems, even when viewed thirty years after its initial release. In purely technical terms, there’s a marked difference between the quality of the animation between previous Ghibli films and Kiki’s Delivery Service. It’s a smoother and much busier movie, taking place in a thriving European city whose style immediately distinguishes it from the traditional Japanese settings of many of the studio’s previous films. Many scenes are tinted in cool tones and colours, with warm and hot colours appearing only as a stark contrast. It’s an intriguing interpretation of Europe, perhaps as a temperate place with great warmth at its core, much like the film itself. Miyazaki was reportedly inspired by a visit he made to Stockholm, and much effort has gone into recreating that chaotic city energy in this movie’s many frames. Though it may seem cliché to say it, Koriko itself is a character, with its hustle and bustle only accentuating Kiki’s initial discomfort and isolation while living and working there. There’s a magnificent sense of scale to the city, with its towering buildings, rush hour roads and crowds of strangers. It’s as if the audience gets to view the city through Kiki’s eyes, as a somewhat alien and unfamiliar place that inspires both curiosity and trepidation in equal measure.
That sense that we’re connected on some level with Kiki never really goes away. She’s a charming, likeable character. The film unfolds at a relatively sedate pace, as if it deliberately takes time to let the events in Kiki’s life occur on their own time without forcing conflict or crisis. Kiki’s arc sees her growing older, wiser and more independent through her struggles: the realisation that the recipient of a homemade pie lovingly baked by a kindly grandmother doesn’t share her grandmother’s kindness and warmth is depicted as just one of many crucial moments in this development. Where films like Totoro are conflict-free, Ghibli offers yet another twist in this film by ensuring the central conflict is to do with the self, rather than with a cackling antagonist with a plan for world domination. It’s about the struggle to believe in yourself when things don’t go according to plan. It’s not the most sophisticated yarn the studio’s ever spun, but its importance and relevance to a wide variety of people shouldn’t go unstated. That Kiki struggles in the doldrums of life, but attempts to stay upbeat and positive, buoyed by the efforts of amusing companions like Osono and the world’s best cat Jiji, makes for an important life lesson for your kids, and a good reminder for all adults too.
Joe Hisaishi brings a casually whimsical score to accompany the whole affair, and as with all Ghibli films, it’s full of quiet snippets of wonder that have little consequence on the story at large: an old housekeeper whose grandparents once told her about the fabled witches is glimpsed trying out Kiki’s broom for herself before being startled out of her reverie by the lady of the house for example or following Kiki’s encounter with a forest-dwelling painter, Jiji casually asks if she intends to paint Kiki in the nude, much to Kiki’s indignation. These little flashes of humour are guaranteed to further endear the audience to a film whose positivity is practically infectious. True, Ghibli has produced films with greater depth, but Kiki’s Delivery Service still has plenty of acuity to spare. It’s a delight.
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