From Up on Poppy Hill's reviews
Media reviews
Los Angeles Times
'From Up on Poppy Hill' is frankly stunning, as beautiful a hand-drawn animated feature as you are likely to see. It's a time-machine dream of a not-so-distant past, a sweet and honestly sentimental story that also represents a collaboration between the greatest of Japanese animators and his up-and-coming son.
The A.V. Club
It?s all lovely and sweet, and while this story might?ve been just as engaging in live action, Miyazaki?s animation does clear away the extraneous detail, re-creating the world of 50 years ago and instilling it with the poignancy of a family snapshot.
The Telegraph
Goro Miyazaki?s film is about the point at which we decide not what we want to be when we grow up, but who, and the way the tiniest moments in our lives often have the most far-reaching effect.
New York Times
This movie...is a lovely example of the strong realist tendency in Japanese animation. Its visual magic lies in painterly compositions of foliage, clouds, architecture and water, and its emotional impact comes from the way everyday life is washed in the colors of memory.
Time Out
From Up on Poppy Hill ? cowritten by Miyazaki, and directed by his son Goro ? shows a different side of the Japanese animation house, one that finds equal wonder in comparatively mundane affairs.
Roger Ebert
It is a beautiful film, a sentimental parable that carefully recreates a post-war Japan obsessed with erasing its past.