| GKIDS | Release Date: November 22, 2023 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
|
Positive:
52
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
|
Watch Now
Critic Reviews
What can we impart to future generations? Can we trust them to keep the balance of the universe? These big questions drive the meaning and the purpose of The Boy and the Heron, yet another masterpiece from Miyazaki that helps us to see the beauty of life around us and contemplate the future of the universe more profoundly.
Read full review
RogerEbert.comDec 6, 2023
The TelegraphOct 13, 2023
If this film is Miyazaki’s true bow, it’s a magnificent final flourish that folds together many of the thematic and aesthetic threads he’s explored through his career: man’s relationship to nature, the majesty of flight, the twin pulls of love and loss. It’s stunning and inscrutable and measures among the best of his works.
Read full review
The Boy and the Heron is irresistible in its dream logic, straddling the adorable (white blob creatures called Warawara that inflate like balloons) and the dark (parakeet soldiers that are on the search for fresh meat). But what makes it most compelling are the ways in which the real and the magical are equal presences.
Read full review
IndieWireSep 7, 2023
While this dream-like warble of a swan song may be too pitchy and scattered to hit with the gale-force power that made “The Wind Rises” feel like such a definitive farewell, The Boy and the Heron finds Miyazaki so nakedly bidding adieu — to us, and to the crumbling kingdom of dreams and madness that he’ll soon leave behind — that it somehow resolves into an even more fitting goodbye, one graced with the divine awe and heart-stopping wistfulness of watching a true immortal make peace with their own death.
Read full review
The Daily BeastSep 8, 2023
SlashfilmDec 7, 2023
Miyazaki remains one of our greatest filmmakers because he utilizes the medium of animation to tell intensely personal stories that open up our eyes to grand new worlds, strange new characters, and unforgettable images. "The Boy and the Heron" is one of the year's best films, and hopefully not his last masterpiece.
Read full review
PolygonJul 17, 2023
The film’s fantasy elements look absolutely beautiful, and they naturally include shots of the classic impossibly delicious-looking Ghibli food. But they come with a kind of wistfulness for days gone by, paired with a full, unsentimental realization that there’s no getting them back. Which all feels like a director taking one last look at his career before bowing out. How Do You Live? has all the makings of a perfect swan song.
Read full review
Maybe the film is simply a fanciful manifestation of one person’s healing passage through a landscape of grief and trauma. But there is little doubt that The Boy and the Heron is one of the Japanese auteur’s most cinematic feature-length films – maybe the most cinematic — in his relatively limited oeuvre.
Read full review
The Boy and the Heron leaves us with questions about our place in the universe and whether it’s worth saving. You may also exit the theater contemplating the afterlife. Regardless of the ideas swirling around in your head, you’ll have witnessed the work of a director who has not lost his ability to stoke your imagination.
Read full review
Regardless of whether the future will bring another Miyazaki movie, The Boy and the Heron is a wonderful gift for everyone who expected The Wind Rises to be his swansong. It’s proof that, no matter how hard Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, and others try, there’s only one animator who finds magic in every release.
Read full review
“Heron” is not as perfect as some of Miyazaki’s past movies. The trippy story is dizzying by the end as too many characters are introduced too late and we navigate a thicket of hastily explained narrative elements. But it nonetheless leaves a powerful emotional effect if you let it wash over you.
Read full review
The emotional punch of The Boy and the Heron is a heart-swelling assertion of cosmic purpose, even amidst sadness and ruin. But it’s delivered after a lot of digression, which can make this swan-song film seem like more a collection of Miyazaki’s disparate, previously unused ideas than a discrete film with a focused mission.
Read full review
Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score







































