Directed by Gorô Miyazaki
Written by Keiko Niwa  and Emi Gunji
Starring  Kokoro Hirasawa, Shinobu Terajima, Gaku Hamada, and Sherina Munaf
Running time 1 hour 22 minutes
MPA rating: PG
Available on HBOMax February 5th, VOD March 23rd, and physical April 6th

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, The Red Herring

Studio Ghibli, the studio home to Hayao Miyazaki, has a stellar reputation worldwide, and is also one of the last bastions of hand drawn animation. So Earwig and the Witch presents a conundrum of sorts, because it is both computer-animated and also not a good film. These may need to be addressed somewhat separately, as the film isn’t bad because it is computer-animated. So let’s start there. 

Earwig and the Witch opens with an exciting highway chase. A mysterious redheaded woman drives a motorcycle while carrying a baby. She is being chased by a small yellow car, which she evades using magic. After seeing last year’s Lupin III: The First, the first computer-animated film starring that character, this opening scene was promising. The action is genuinely exciting, the character designs are interesting, and, after that sequence, there’s a few moments of that trademark Ghibli stillness that lets your eyes wander over individual blades of glass. 

Sadly, those moments are few and far between. There’s not much I dislike about the animation style itself: the character designs are good, the cat is cute, and the environments are well done. Most of the film takes place in a small house, following the four characters that live there: the little girl Earwig (Kokoro Hirasawa), the witch Bella Yaga (Shinobu Terajima), the mysterious Mandrake (Etsushi Toyokawa), and Thomas the cat (Gaku Hamada). But it is the way the characters move within the environment that feels off. Replicating some exaggerated movements characteristic of the anime style with rigid three dimensional models makes for some awkward movements, and gives a decent amount of the film a stilted feel. 

It doesn’t help that the story is fairly uninteresting. Much of it is presented as mystery, which distracts from the slice of life feel.  Additionally, evoking Kiki’s Delivery Service and other beloved Ghibli classics a few times only manages to emphasize the deficiencies here. Earwig is a compelling enough main character, but neither Bella nor Mandrake make much of an impression. Add to that a score that feels downright generic, and there’s very little here to hold onto. A couple of sequences have some charm to them, but even at 80 minutes, Earwig and the Witch feels like a slog.

The director, Gorô Miyazaki, is the son of the famed director, and has yet to make a film that seems to really connect with audiences. From this film, it seems that the younger filmmaker has not found a way to inject personality into his films. Despite working with large teams of animators, the best films in this medium manage to feel personal, and there’s nothing personal about this, rendering it about as soulless as any American animation purely designed to entice kids with a Happy Meal tie-in.