Studio Ghibli is like the Pixar of Japanese animated movies. Almost all of them are pretty amazing, but none of them had been 3D animated until Earwig and the Witch. Since Studio Ghibli movies are exclusively on HBO Max, I decided to watch it as it’s rather recent.
The film starts with a young mother taking her baby to the doorstep of an orphanage. Turns out this woman is a witch, and to protect her daughter, she must separate from her until she’s done with the evil witches who are after her.
Earwig stays at the orphanage a little less than a decade. Her mother doesn’t pick her up, but rather she’s adopted by a rather peculiar couple who seem far more sinister than one might expect.
She isn’t adopted because the couple wanted a family. But rather that she would be used for very cheap labor around the house. She figures out the woman is a witch, and is quite happy about it. The man in the house seems more demonic than the witch, but will Earwig survive such a place?
Earwig and the Witch may be the worst film ever made by Studio Ghibli. While the 3D animation is odd for Studio Ghibli, it’s really not bad in anyway. But the story and character development is rather boring. It doesn’t really get any better the closer you get to the ending either. To be the first film for Studio Ghibli in many years, they flopped hard this time.
