REVIEW: Mary and the Witch’s Flower channels all the best things you loved about Studio Ghibli

REVIEW: Mary and the Witch’s Flower lives up to Studio Ghibli’s famously high anime standards, even if it lands a notch below the works of the master Hayao Miyazaki.

Scene from the film Mary and the Witch's Flower. Madman Films.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower (PG)

Rating: three and a half stars (3.5 out of 5)

Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi (When Marnie Was There)

Starring: the voices of Ruby Barnhill, Kate Winslet, Jim Broadbent, Ewen Bremner.

Unexpectedly learning to spell

When the revered Japanese anime company Studio Ghibli closed its doors a few years back, not all of its gifted creative team went their separate ways.

Many former employees have joined director Hiromasa Yonebayashi (Arrietty) over at his new Studio Ponoc shingle, and this fetchingly ethereal adaptation of Mary Stewart’s 1971 book The Little Broomstick is the first fruit of their labours.

Mary and the Witch's Flower is the highly anticipated inaugural feature from Studio Ponoc, the Japanese animation house founded by former Studio Ghibli director Hiromasa Yonebayashi.

May there be many more, for Mary and the Witch’s Flower lives up to Ghibli’s famously high standards (even if it lands a notch below the works of the master Hayao Miyazaki).

A slow, yet freewheeling tale begins in an enchanted forest, where young Mary (voiced by Ruby Barnhill) has innocently followed a neighbour’s cat.

A chance encounter with a mystical broom leads Mary to the sky-high locale of Endor College for witches and warlocks, where the kooky staff (which include Kate Winslet and Jim Broadbent) mistake their unwitting visitor for a new student.

Mary and the Witch's Flower is the highly anticipated inaugural feature from Studio Ponoc, the Japanese animation house founded by former Studio Ghibli director Hiromasa Yonebayashi.

Any similarities to anything remotely Harry Potter-ish start and end right here. Without giving anything away, let’s just say the Endor curriculum is not entirely structured around the educational betterment of its gifted young charges.

Lovely stuff for all the anime enthusiasts out there (who might like to know there is also a version in the original Japanese for those who find English-dubbed dialogue too distracting.)

Originally published as REVIEW: Mary and the Witch’s Flower channels all the best things you loved about Studio Ghibli