Dir: Goro Miyazaki
With: Timothy Dalton, Willem Dafoe
American novelist Ursula Le Guin's sword-and-sorcery series is brought to the big screen by Japan's much-admired anime outfit, Studio Ghibli, which was responsible for the recent critically-acclaimed excellent animated features Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle.
Unfortunately, the cinema rendering of Earthsea (which is being released in subtitled and dubbed versions, the latter featuring the voice talents of former James Bond star Timothy Dalton and Willem Dafoe) is, by comparison, an unimaginatively executed affair.
That's partly because Le Guin's source material is cliched high fantasy, which boasts a naff sociological/environmental message, and partly because director Goro Miyazaki, the son of Ghibli's guru Hayao Miyazaki, evidently has neither the directing vision nor skill of his father.
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