Arrietty

"The Borrowers" are the little people who collect odds and ends from folk's houses and put them to better use, usually without their erstwhile owners being any the wiser. "Arrietty" is one of them, and coming up to her fourteenth birthday is keen to accompany her dad "Pod" on her first excursion into the house above. Her slightly neurotic mother is apprehensive, but that is outweighed by her need for sugar and tissue, and so off they go... Meantime, recently arrived in the house is the young "Sho", who has been sent to this rural idyll by his largely absentee parents to rest up before an impending heart operation. His heart may well not be in tip-top condition, but his eyes are and thanks to his cat he espies "Arrietty" in their garden and again after she had raided their sugar bowl. Is he going to prove troublesome for her, or might he turn out to be her friend? That isn't a question we need to ask of his maid "Haru" who has long suspected these critters live under their home, and who is just waiting for an excuse to call in the pest controllers. The one unbreakable rule for this family is that they cannot be found by human beans (well that's what my subtitling identified us as) and so now they must consider whether they can remain in safety or whether to avail themselves of an offer from "Spiller" to set sail for pastures new in his cast iron teapot. It helped that this was a familiarly engaging story from my childhood, but this is still a charmingly animated and really quite enjoyable series of adventures to watch unfold. Some considerable effort has been made to amiably characterise just about everyone, including the puss that night have preferred to gobble them all up and the scene-stealing housekeeper, and the attention to the detail - especially in the doll's house - is special.