From Up On Poppy Hill Reviews
National Post
The studio's stunning textures and vibrant details still give Poppy Hill that ethereal quality sure to mollify nostalgic Ghibli fans, but its strengths are fastidiously undone by a predictable and underwhelming plot.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Slant Magazine
The story arc is somewhat facile, and its lesson about preserving history instead of demolishing it to make way for new, shiny things is too obvious.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
We Got This Covered
Soft, warm animation and resonant reflections on death, moving on and growing up can't fully overcome slighter plot points and erratic music choices.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/10
Las Vegas Weekly
A sweet but rather bland coming-of-age story.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Top CriticThe artistry is peaceful and comforting to the eyes but not especially stirring. Given the pictorial extremes that Studio Ghibli has gone to in the past, "Up on Poppy Hill" is weak tea.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
A film about many things-so many that the magic of Studio Ghibli's past has been displaced by exposition and earnest discussion.
RedEye
Based on the jolly, jazzy score that keeps From Up on Poppy Hill lively, the latest from Studio Ghibli appears to have missed its calling as a Broadway musical.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Film Racket
What limits From Up on Poppy Hill is its seeming whitewashing of some tough subjects, including the unseen consequences of war and the role of women in post-war Japan.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Austin Chronicle
From Up on Poppy Hill, Studio Ghibli's latest, is decidedly earthbound in comparison to those transportive earlier films, though it's not without its charms.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Movie Habit
Miyazaki, yes, but Goro and not Hayao
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Is there a Japanese word that combines "pretty," "demure" and "boring"?
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
TV Guide's Movie Guide
Rest assured, the younger Miyazaki has clearly earned his stars, as Poppy Hill offers just the same intimate, ultimately life-affirming kind of storytelling we've come to expect from the family name.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Some third-act revelations may really test the scales of plausibility, but Poppy Hill ultimately is not about its story as much as the emotional states it probes.
It's the sort of movie that can prompt daydreams about inhabiting its world of flowers and hills, passing ships and harbor lights, where there's no Internet and romance happens face to face.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
The film maintains an optimistic tone without succumbing to nostalgia, and as always with Studio Ghibli, the company Miyazaki cofounded in the 80s, the hand-drawn animation is gorgeous.
Paste Magazine
Gorgeously animated, with rich color scapes and detailed mise-en-scène, Goro Miyazaki's sophomore outing incorporates lovely, introspective imagery of, say, a cloud passing in front of the moon or smokestacks shot at a steep angle.
Full Review
| Original Score: 8.9/10
Movie Nation
Lovely, sentimental, but a conventional nostalgic melodrama that had no compelling reason to be filmed as anime
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Shows a different side of the Japanese animation house, one that finds equal wonder in comparatively mundane affairs.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Beliefnet
It's strange to see so much focus on the details of the backgrounds, which are exquisitely rendered, when there is so little attention to the expressiveness of the characters.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
The screenplay deftly balances the characters' intimate concerns with the nation's historic growing pains, resulting in a story that's as engrossing as the visuals are breathtaking.
