So, Arrietty is an adaptation of Mary Norton’s childhood-favourite series (and don’t forget the films!) The Borrowers, which is about an ecologically invalid subspecies of human beings that are inexplicably about five inches tall or less and basically subsist off stolen goods and services. This adaptation is by Studio Fucking Ghibli, who also did my favourites Howl’s Moving Castle and Princess Mononoke. Oh, and not forgetting the godlike Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro.

I literally couldn’t love Studio Ghibli films more if I tried. They are a tour de force in animation, steadfastly championing the 2D cel-shaded animation genre like the 24-carat geniuses they are. Pixar and Disneamworks can’t touch them. People are leaping frogs about Pixar producing its first female protagonist!! with the (and rightly so) hugely anticipated Brave – but Studio Ghibli have been writing fantastic, inspirational female protagonists since they first began with Sheeta in 1986’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky. I mean, come on. While we’re fannying about here in the West with bloody Sucker Punch apparently making history with having so many female protagonists, they’ve made things like Princess Mononoke, where not only is the title girl a complete badass, she’s also actually not by-the-book squeaky blameless sacrificial-lamb benevolent. She has power and flaws and rage and potency and – wait, this is a review of Arrietty.

Arrietty is the first film to be directed by the Studio’s newest induction to directing, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, and it’s absolutely magnificent. I am slightly ashamed to admit that, while I read the first Borrowers book when I was a kid, I can’t remember much about it, other than Arrietty being great fun and very empathic as a main character, and that I wanted to know exactly how they made their clothes. The film does an awful lot for scale fetishists like me (SMALL VERSIONS OF BIG THINGS THAT ARE JUST THE SAME!!!) and explores in quite some visual detail the things that will change at that level of minutiae – in particular, surface tension and the behaviour of liquids. How they pour tea! Is amazing! I squealed in the cinema!

The story is simple and quite static. It takes place in only a few days, and really, nothing huge happens in the vast scheme of things, but that’s just it: from your perspective as an audience, nothing much has changed at all. But from Arrietty’s tiny perspective, everything has! Her house that she’s lived in all her life has had to be abandoned, she’s met more of her own species, having believed that her family were the only ones left, and she’s made friends with a human boy, despite her parents, Pod and Homily, warning her of the inherent dangers therein. Everything’s changed. Her whole worldview has been rocked to the core – and yet Yonebayashi keeps us, the audience, at this cool, gentle, static distance with his long still shots of water dripping off the edges of plants and Cécile Corbel’s gentle music. It’s amazing. It’s like he does perspective with your perspective.

That was the most amazingly pretentious sentences I’ve ever written and I’m not even sorry. But yes. There’s a lot of focus on scale, naturally, in this. That’s where the magic is. From the moment you see Arrietty, fleeing expertly from a laugh-out-loud-amusingly-faced fat cat, you’re enchanted. She’s so small. And everything she has in her life, from bay leaves to fish hooks, feel so familiar and worn with use. You’re captivated between the alien nature of observing life lived at 1/8th scale, and being charmed by how familiar it is at the same time. It’s perfect. Dude, did I mention the tea?

The main difference between (what I remember of) the first book and the film is firstly that it’s vastly simplified, and the inclusion of Spiller (“Dreadful Spiller” in t’books) as a motion catalyst. He’s introduced having rescued Pod from a sprained ankle in the rain – and my god, the moment he came on screen? I fell in love. I am going to cosplay as that boy every day for the rest of my life. He’s completely amazing. He’s wild and awkward and ingenious and has a KETTLE FOR A BOAT. He’s a little bit of a shoehorned-in love interest of sorts for Arrietty, but the shows of affection are mostly from him to her – she’s far too busy escaping crows and playing catch with woodlice. And even then, there’s only arguably two of these awkward Spiller-y shows of admiration, so you needn’t worry – as I do – that an oafishly stapled-on heteronormative TWOO WUV will impinge upon your film-viewing.

Basically, I want Spiller to have a cameo appearence in everything. Which will happen, because I will dress as him and climb onto sets of productions and films and things and run around in the background.

Overall, this is a brilliant directing debut for Studio Ghibli’s brand spanking new physics-obsessed boy, and I’m very excited to see what else he’ll be doing in the future. I’d compare him to Miyazaki, but I can’t, because all I’ll do is shriek “HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE” seventeen times before passing out in a flood of my own tears.

YOU SHOULD SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• You should always see a Studio Ghibli film immediately and without reservation because if you don’t, I truly believe you become one of the soulless
• This is a charming adaptation that I think does Norton proud – if only for the fact that it engrossed me so completely that I now have to return to the novels!
• Niya the cat is side-splittingly hilarious
• THE TEA. LOOK AT HOW THEY POUR THE TEA.

YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• I can only think of one reason that’d prevent you from seeing this film, and that is if all the cinemas in your area immediately burn to the ground tonight.