PERHAPS IT’S the sad-eyed solemnity with which the talking fire demon addresses the ancient changeling. Or perhaps it’s the serenely obedient face on the softly floating scarecrow. But somewhere around the halfway mark in Howl’s Moving Castle, the latest animated fantasy from Hayao Miyazaki, some troubling questions suggest themselves to the conscientious movie-goer. Such as, where have all the gags gone? Where are the wisecracks? The double entendres? And what’s happened to the hyper-kinetic Robin Williams cameo? And while we’re at it, where are all the non-stop movie parodies? And the risqué celebrity jibes? This is a kids’ movie after all.

And yet Howl’s Moving Castle succeeds precisely because it is completely divested of this self-referential bricolage. The movie is a hit with critics and Miyazaki is revered internationally (recently honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival) for this same reason. He makes movies for kids.

Not “Kiddults”, not “Middle Youth”, not “Rejuveniles” or any other creepy subset of materially affluent yet emotionally stymied consumers. No, Miyazaki makes movies for children. And as such his films have an appealing purity of story-telling purpose and an unselfconscious belief in the power of myth that resonates with the widest possible audience — in Japan his movies consistently out-gross their Hollywood competitors.

Hollywood, conversely, starts with an unselfconscious belief in the widest possible audience and works backwards, haphazardly, to whatever unlucky fairytale or fable is newly arrived on the Tinseltown chopping block. In short, Hollywood doesn’t make movies for children; it makes children’s movies for everyone (tie-in lunchboxes, duvet covers and PS2 video games not included in the price of admission).

The resulting films, regularly released from the production stables of Dreamworks, Pixar and Fox Animation, are loaded with gleaming, digitally-lacquered environments, random bouts of slapstick action and regular doses of wearying comedic shtick. They pay lip-service to the merits of storytelling while remaining furiously loyal to the gag-per-minute dictates of the comedy writer’s handbook.

Consequently, these kiddie flicks appear less reinventions of Bambi and Beauty and The Beast, and more smart and cynical amphetamine-fuelled episodes of Will & Grace — ie, resonating narratives are so out! One-liners are, like, totally in!

Take the computer-animated heavy-hitters Shark Tale, Robots and Madagascar — three of this year’s biggest kiddie flicks. Shark Tale begins as an Aesop-like fable about a young mischievous fish (played by Will Smith. See, it’s funny already) who must learn the rewarding value of honesty, and then it simply grinds to a halt amidst relentless Goodfellas, Godfather and Scarface nods. Similarly, the heroic journey in Robots takes second place to the wacky madcap banter of Robin Williams and Mel Brooks. While any semblance of a mythic narrative in the animal escapade Madagascar is jettisoned in favour of endless mugging, double-entendres, and Silence of the Lambs gags.

That these movies were critically mauled and generally underperformed (relative to expectations) at the summer box office is hardly surprising. What is disturbing, though, is just how confused they are about the nature of their central pre-teen target demographic.

Consistent with attitudes in wider Western society, they seem to be in crisis about the changing nature of childhood. With their cute and cuddly animal protagonists and their delightfully cynical and sophisticated rapid-fire exchanges, these films are caught between the desire to create precociously jaded, sexualised and branded consumers on one hand, and the need to keep these same consumers in a protected state of prelapsarian innocence on the other. They seem almost embarrassed to indulge in the simplicity of storytelling without immediate recourse to an overworked comedy routine or a knowing nod to the audience. It’s as if the very idea of an un-ironic kids’ movie is cringe-worthy, and the very notion of childhood is innately mawkish and sentimental.

Yet evidence from the movie annals suggests otherwise. Some of the greatest films in the medium have gamely submerged themselves in the texture of childhood. The Wizard of Oz, The 400 Blows, The Black Stallion, ET — all defy the notion that childhood is soppy and sentimental and instead find it to be riven, as any Freudian will tell you, with definitive moments of loss and separation (Dorothy from home, ET from Elliot and so on).

This fundamental human truth — that even the happiest childhoods are inherently tragic — is something that Miyazaki knows well. “All children are tragic,” he said in a recent interview, while defending the elegiac undercurrent that runs through his work. And as such, like the great storytellers of the past, such as Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumont (Beauty and the Beast) or Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (Cinderella), he employs deceptively simple and ostensibly mythic tales to revisit and re-examine the pivotal moments of loss that fascinate us all.

Finally, let’s hope that the success of Howl’s Moving Castle isn’t confined to curious cinemagoers and the cartoon cognoscenti, and that it makes a lasting impression on the mainstream movie industry (the Pixar head John Lasseter is overseeing its international release, which is a start). If so, it might not be long before Hollywood filmmakers can restore some much needed dignity to the children’s film.

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