‘Earwig and the Witch’ apparently couldn’t conjure a third act

Posted on February 12, 2021

By MARK VIOLA

If there was a Mount Rushmore of animation studios, one of the first to be carved into the mountain would be Japan’s Studio Ghibli, which for three decades has produced some of the best animated films ever, many of which were from the mind of famed director Hayao Miyazaki.

The studio said in early 2020 it was working on a new film from Miyazaki’s son, Gorō Miyazaki (“Tales from Earthsea”), and it would be the studio’s first foray into computer animation.

That film is “Earwig and the Witch,” based on the book by the late Diana Wynne Jones, who also wrote “Howl’s Moving Castle,” adapted by Hayao Miyazaki into an Academy Award-winning film in 2004.

The story follows a young orphan, Earwig, who enjoys her life at the orphanage because she has pretty much everyone wrapped around her finger. However, her life changes significantly when she is unexpectedly adopted by the Bella Yaga and her companion, The Mandrake. In her new home, Earwig finds herself little more than a servant to Bella Yaga, who is a witch. However, if Earwig can learn a little magic of her own — with the help of the talking cat, Thomas — she might just be able to turn this situation to her advantage.

Going into this movie, my biggest concern was the animation. Studios rarely pull off great computer animated films (at least aesthetically) on their first try, even a venerable studio like Ghibli. The promotional material didn’t give me much confidence, with the character animation looking like something you would see in a low-budget computer game cut scene.

Having now seen the movie, I have to admit the character animation isn’t great, although I got used to it in relatively short order. The rest of the animation is much better, with some of the settings really well done, although that was mostly for static shots. Anything moving, like cars, looked like animation we might have seen from top studios 15 years ago — not in 2021.

That all being said, the real failure with “Earwig and the Witch” is the story, or more accurately, the lack of a complete story. What we get in this movie is essentially two acts, with the credits arriving just as you might expect the third act to begin. There really isn’t anything else I can call this movie from a story perspective other than an incomplete film.

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