movie review - The Boy and the Beast
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Toronto, 2016.11.11
This is an animated flick from Japan, about a young boy kidnapped to an alternate world (of ghosts or demons, I want to say?) who winds up living with a bluff beast of a man. Hence the title. The brutish adult is indeed quite rough, in the time-honored tradition of being quite useless and belligerent. And the boy is indeed a needy child, and it's the voyage that matters.
There are a couple of disjointed pieces to this story, one set in the spirit world and the other in our world, to which the boy eventually returns. The whole thing feels like maybe it could have been made into a mini-series if it is that ambitious and I think it's too much to contain in a movie and carry off.
Not recommended.