Howl's Moving Castle

I did like the movie. What I liked the most was the character of Calcifer. He has an outgoing personality and he cheers things up; then, the dog (he was funny even without changing expression); and Kabu (such a gentle character). In my country’s dubbing, Calcifer has a voice that makes him spontaneous and kind of funny, which I think is appropriate. The rest of the characters sound decent, with Sophie’s voice being pretty good when she is older.

A scene I really liked was (spoilers, sorry) when Sophie goes to talk to Mrs Suleimann and she figures that Howl will disguise himself to follow her. She starts wondering where he may be. Out of the blue, a strange dog follows her, and she whispers, ‘Is that you, Howl?’. The dog barks, and she takes it as a confirmation. So she starts chatting with the dog, about her plans of action, what he is thinks of it, etc.

So Sophie gets to the palace, and to her surprise, the dog sits next to the queen. Suddenly, Sophie realises: this is a normal dog she’s been talking to all the way to the place thinking he was Howl in disguise; her face was priceless :). However, much later (spoilers again) we’ll figure that he serves the queen a purpose of spying on people (through some crystal ball?); but definitely, he did not get to her by chance.

Now let’s focus on what I did not like as much. It is divided in three points.    

• Incoherence of one character. I am talking of the witch. Spoilers again: the queen renders her very very old, as if she was around 90. As such, she gets fixed in things, like unimportant remarks. The movie wants to make us realise this: when Howl transforms the house powerfully, Sophie and the child start to admire the effect of his magic, and she can only say that the fire is pretty, which is what matters to her. However, the characters actions and phrases suddenly caught me off guard in some scenes (the cigar scene, for example), in which is eloquent - and agile! How can a 90 year old jump from her chair like a child, catch a bag on the go and *run* to her sit as quick as possible? This was rather strange to watch, because it did not represent her age. And she started speaking like a younger person, and giving answers that actually made sense - she is able to realise that Sophie in fact loves Howl; that requires awareness and we saw that she was previously living ”inside her mind”. A few scenes later, she again focuses on unimportant remarks, and acts in a way that fits (when she cries over Sophie being unfair for throwing water on Howls ‘heart’, failing to realise that she was saving her life).
• Lack of explanation. Yes, there are many things that are left unexplained, like:

1. Sophie’s appearance. After she is enchanted by the witch, she becomes an old woman. But at a scene, we realise that Howl can see her as young (at least, I though, when she is sleeping). The fact is that her young and old appearances alternate themselves, without us nothing whether it is only her who sees herself as old and the rest can see her as young. But I don’t think so, because she says out loud she is old and nobody rebates her statement. So why do we see young Sophie? To make us realise she has the soul of a young woman? And more importantly, her enchantment remains unresolved. Edit: Reading other comments, it seems that Sophie’s is liberated in the end, precisely when she returns Howl his heart; however, we are not told. One may as well think that it is just a perception that she looks like her young self.
2. The queen’s war. Howl is threatened by the queen on a few occasions. She really wants to get hold of him and take him powers. Her reasons, even when she speaks a bit to Sophie about that, are not very clear. The plot of the queen’s war against him is under-developed yet an important part of the movie, with the queen’s soldiers bombing the city and searching for Howl’s castle. Since we don’t know much about the matter, we can’t see what her motives are, why he must confront her, what he did during the confrontation, whether he won (although later we realise he didn’t). Then, out of the blue, the queen sees Howl have a happy ending with Sophie and Navet having broken his enchantment, and she chooses not to keep fighting Howl. Just like that. Does the character have any coherence? Since she is not well-developed, we don’t know much of what got her to repent like that. And if she wants to be so good, why does she not give the witch her older appearance back.
3. Sophie’s mother. She went to see her daughter, and she was not in the slightest taken aback or surprised to see a 60–70 year old Sophie. I am left confused by the fact that I’ve read her mentioned as her sister, but in the dub she said “mother”, and Letty has a mature voice. In any case, this is not very realistic. Imagine if you had a son/daughter/sister and the next day, they looked older than you, would you not react? In fact, you don’t need to imagine because in movies like Big (Tom Hanks) this topic is dealt with. And no, Tom’s mum in the movie does not treat him as if nothing happened when she sees him as an adult for the first time.