I wanted to like this movie but for the first time since Pom Poko a Studio Ghibli film has left me cold.

To be fair this is at least partly due to some technical issues with the print I saw – panning shots were incredibly jerky, enough so to completely ruin the beauty of the backgrounds and often the suspension of disbelief.

However there was also something else that was missing. Some sense of heart or soul to the film that I just didn’t connect to.

In terms of the adaptation from the novels it was mostly drawn from The Farthest Shore and Tehanu, and in many of the essential aspects of the world building was closer to the novels than I’d hoped for. The story… less so.

Its a pretty enough to watch (when its not jerking all over the place), and I’d like to see a smoother copy, but overall no better than average.