Whisper Of The Heart - Movie Review

Rating: 3 out of 5

One of Studio Ghibli's strangest productions has to be this, Whisper of the Heart. Not because of any crazy morphing creatures -- though the film has a few of those -- but because of its subject matter. Here's a movie about teen romance, set largely in a library. There are no rakish adventurers, no ghosts, no forest creatures. Just a boy and a girl and only one magical cat to speak of. The film is generally charming, though its love story is strange to the point of inaccesibility: A girl who writes alternate lyrics to "Take Me Home, Country Roads"? Whoa, now that's weird.

Aka Mimi wo sumaseba.

Facts and Figures

Year: 1995

Run time: 111 mins

In Theaters: Saturday 15th July 1995

Distributed by: Optimum Releasing

Production compaines: Studio Ghibli, Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network (NTV), Hakuhodo, Mimi wo Sumaseba Production Committee

Reviews

Contactmusic.com: 3 / 5

Rotten Tomatoes: 91%
Fresh: 10 Rotten: 1

IMDB: 8.0 / 10

Cast & Crew

Director: Yoshifumi Kondo

Producer: Ned Lott, Toshio Suzuki

Screenwriter: Hayao Miyazaki

Starring: Yōko Honna as Shizuku Tsukishima, Kazuo Takahashi as Seiji Amasawa, Takashi Tachibana as Seiya Tsukishima, Shigeru Muroi as Asako Tsukishima, Shigeru Tsuyuguchi as The Baron, Keiju Kobayashi as Shiro Nishi, Yorie Yamashita as Shiho Tsukishima, Maiko Kayama as Yuko Harada, Yoshimi Nakajima as Sugimura, Minami Takayama as Kosaka-sensei, Mayumi Iizuka as Kinuyo, Naohisa Inoue as Tall friend of Mr. Nishi, Suguru Egawa as Baseball Analyst, Mitsuaki Ogawa as Baseball Announcer

Also starring: Cary Elwes, David Gallagher, Harold Gould, Abigail Mavity, Brittany Snow, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Ned Lott, Hayao Miyazaki