Mary and the witches' flower (2017) ***

Source: Imdb

What a surprise this coming-of-age adventure about a little girl and a magic flower was! Sure, it had elements of Harry Potter ala "ooh! Here's a magic school and by the way, you're a witch." It also kid of reminded me of Totoro. Was it the absent parents? The cats? No idea. The story was engaging and not the usual level of predictable. The visuals were beautiful, almost Ghibli-standard, with stunning watercolour paintings of a lovely English-looking landscape for backgrounds and careful animations. The effects were gorgeous. I found the very beginning particularly impressive, with the explosions and the chase scene. That thrust me straight into the story and got me engaged to the core. Great work on sinking in that first hook! The score was also beautiful. I credit it with much of the emotion in the film. And this is where we start differing from Ghibil: Here, the music occasionally seemed to force the emotion instead of underlining it. Also, the characters were just very two-dimensional and not very interesting. Motivations and principles were very hard to pin down and only manifested in straight-forward thoughts and actions. That fell below the standard I'm used to from the likes of Miyazaki. I guess there is a reason why I love his work at Ghibli but don’t watch many other animés.
Still: all in all a very good film. An easy 3/5

Mary and the witches' flower on Imdb