Review of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (1997) by Eric J — 28 Dec 2008

RATING (0 to ****): ***1/2.

Ever have one of those days where you wake up late, are forced to deliver something stupid to your weird aunt, fail miserably on the day's exam, get caught in everyone's horseplay, start a fire in your cooking class, and find out the brake line on your bicycle has been cut as you're rolling down a hill and about to hit the oncoming train? That this sequence of events in this worst day of your life makes you either want to time travel and make things better, or find the Murphy of Murphy's Law and shoot him in the face?

Makoto's day proceeds as such in Mamoru Hosoda's "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time", and as you can tell by the title, she does not perform a community service by doing the latter but finds whenever she's about to trip and fall onto something, she finds herself somewhere earlier in time. This is, of course, the recipe to making people think she's crazy-- every one of her time leaps has to result into her crashing into something at her destination.

She's also pretty stupid, but rather than killing the picture, in conjunction with her attitude this just makes it all the more enjoyable. The plot continues to where she delivers a bag of peaches to her "Aunt Witch", who as it turns out understands exactly what Makoto's going through. She explains, "Most girls your age go through it", but also warns her if she's going to do anything big with it.

Makoto, not having every action heroine's life, initially uses her newfound ability to do things like pass that exam, switch her place in cooking class, and go back in summer and eat her leftover pudding that her little sister originally took. Auntie Witch explains the classic moral of "your fortune may be the result of someone else's misfortune.".

Okay, so it's exactly the same message we've gotten in every time travel movie, like its closest comparative "The Butterfly Effect". But it's also a lot lighter and a lot more fun, and with the time travel sequences consisting of a very confused Makoto falling down a spider web of timestamps, it's giggle-inducingly trippy.

The main plot concerns Makoto's two friends, Chiaki and Kousuke, and the "big event" that causes her powers to turn things into chaos. After Chiaki talks about relationships, Makoto hitches a ride home on Kousuke's bike. A few seconds later, Kousuke asks her out (very, very casually), and instantly she disappears and does the entire conversation over again. She abruptly switches the topic, but Kousuke pops the question, same exact wording, as before. Makoto's ultimate solution is to refuse a ride home and avoid Kousuke at all costs, but even as nobody knows her powers, everyone around her notices her strange attitude and knack for popping up at the right place at the right time. And more importantly, what is that number "90" she sees suddenly tattooed on her arm?

The film makes its inevitable turnaround to something a lot less comical than before, but for once we accept the transition as the story goes in truly unexpected directions. The only thing that ever slows the picture down is Mamoru Hosoda's usage of still-frame montages, once over a voiceover with vital backstory, which are likely the product of a low animation budget. But you never stop feeling for Makoto, who finds even when she's using her powers to save someone else people are always going to get hurt, and I guarantee that you'll be sitting through the entire end credits to see if some other continuation doesn't pop up.

MPAA: Not Rated (but would be PG-13 for brief sexual references and an accident scene).

Runtime: 1 hour, 38 minutes (94 minutes of "real movie").