Lindsey Do-it

Warning: Spoilers Ahead. Long story short, this movie is as if "Ready Player One" and "Beauty and the Beast" had an anime baby. While it is beautiful to watch, with stunning art and visual affects, this movie has a decent amount of faffing about. 20 minutes of long shots of pretty things could have been cut to tighten up the film without making it feel or look any less pretty. I appreciate the morals this story going for, however it's blatantly on the nose at times. SPOILERS: I also feel that this movie lacked a satisfying ending. There's no guarantee that the two children are safe at the end. They aren't removed from the abusive household to live in the country with Suzu, not even the authorities become involved. We don't ever see the kids becoming safe in any way. While standing up for what you believe in is incredibly important, there needs to be tangible actions taken. Standing up to narsisitic and physical abuse requires getting out of the situation, even more so when children are involved. This movie made a dangerous choice by leading people to believe that standing up to a chronic abuser one time is going to solve anything. If anything, that makes the abuser more angry and more dangerous and more likely to lash out in the future. And the poor kid shouldn't have to "fight" even more and "become even stronger". He's 14. He and his brother need to be safe. The movie implied a good ending but we don't see it for those two children. In movie-land, those two children are in worse danger than ever. My head-canon is that the police removed the children from their abusive father and Suzy's father agree to foster them in the country. Suzu and her father could have talked about it over dinner. That would have been a much safer ending that I feel the movie was actually going for.