Likewise Boyle is a great bit of casting and Gould is a welcome presence even if he has comparatively few lines. Ewles is a perfect Baron and his voice is smooth as you can imagine.
Hathaway is a good lead as cute as her character and not labouring under forced depth. The English voice cast is also good and they bring out the fun in the dialogue. The animation does not compare to the sheer magnificence to be found in some of Ghibli's finest films but it is still wonderfully cute although I gave a copy of this to my girlfriend, I avoided watching it with her so that I wouldn't have to cope with her screams of delight at each individual cat on the screen. It is very short but then that suited the material. All of these combine to produce an enjoyable little fairy tale set in the real world and the cat kingdom. True the story lacks the emotional depth that I wanted it to have but it makes up for it with a good narrative, imagination and some nice humour. For those that consider that "it is not perfect" is the same as "it is not any good" then by all means avoid this film but personally I found it an enjoyable little fantasy that I can only imagine children will love. This appears to be the case with Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli simply because it is not as poetic and epic as Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky and others. It is a problem that I bet we wish that we all had in our jobs the problem that our "normal" standards are so high that anything less than brilliant is perceived as being disappointing. Her only help is the Cat Bureau managed by the dashing and debonair Baron. Apparently the cat Haru saved was the King's son Lune and she learns that she has been rewarded with marriage to Lune not that she wants it. Regardless, Haru tries to just forget the whole thing but later that night she is visited by the King of Cat Kingdom, The Cat King. When she sees a cat crossing the road and stuck in the path of a lorry, she acts quickly to rescue it only for it to stand up and thank her! Haru assumes she has just gone mad but when she tells her mother she is reminded of a similar incident in Haru's childhood where she maintained she was able to understand what a kitten was saying. She feels picked on at school, unable to get her life together or even talk to the boy she likes. Then you could wish to own it, most probably to be able to show it to some friends or family.Haru is down on her luck. So, don't hesitate if you have the opportunity to go and see it. But I will never watch it again and again as I could do with a "Kiki", a "Nausicaa", or (my favorite) a "Mimi o Sumaseba" (aka "Whispers of the Heart"). A high rating anyway, especially for having been able to make us laugh so much without ever using any "dumb" easy joke as we could now find so (too) often in nowadays films. Therefore, I would rate it differently for the first seeing, and the ones after. The graphics aren't the main interest in the film, and when you already know the jokes, well. But I have perhaps only one regret: I'm afraid I won't find the same pleasure I always find to see a Ghibli film again and again. This Yamada family is close enough to us, and their behavior seemed rather universal to me.
The auditorium was fully filled (some people had to sit on the stairs), and everyone was laughing out loud, having no problem at all to follow the jokes (the movie was subtitled) even if we may have missed a few of them, due to a possible lack in cultural knowledge. And then, the magic of its humor took me. Especially coming from the director of such films as "Hotaru no Haka" (aka "Grave of the Fireflies") When seeing the very first pictures, I wondered what these drawings were, so far from the characters I got used to see, and like. Nothing my knowledge of previous Ghibli films could have prepared me to see. Different graphics, different animation, different kind of story. This is a Studio Ghibli movie: The Totoro is displayed at the opening, and the animation is very well done.