Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Written by Hayao Miyazaki
IMDB

Ponyo is a movie for children through-and-through. The protagonist is a five year old boy who finds a fish one day while playing with his toy boat. He takes the fish in, but loses her when its mad scientist father steals her back. The twist: the fish is magic and becomes a little girl via magic powers. The little boy and the fish girl chill together.
I heard some bad things about this movie when it was released in America, so I shied away from it. I am a fan of Miyazaki, so I finally decided to give it a shot; also, it being available on Netflix instant helped. I enjoyed it.
It is a pretty crazy movie--very Japanese. The mad scientist character is very weird, but he really isn't necessarily the antagonist--there isn't one. There is a ton of magic. If this was made in America and pushed as a mainstream release, I could see the idiot Christians protesting it. They were probably too busy searching for the birth certificate of our American born black president.
If you have a kid or multiple kids, this would be a good movie to watch with them. It isn't like some of these terrible American children's movies that are peppered with "adult" humor and reference to things from the 1960s. It is just a fun movie made especially for children and it doesn't try hard to please the adult audience, which is exactly what won me over. They didn't play any songs by The Monkees or Smash Mouth, but it did have a terrible theme song during the closing credits, but at least it wasn't "All Star." I highly recommend this movie if you like cartoons and don't need 30 fart jokes to keep you interested in a movie.

9/10