Star power doesn’t elevate ‘Ponyo’

Miley Cyrus’ kid sister, Noah, and the “Bonus Jonas” brother, Frankie, are the bait to lure American kids to see “Ponyo,” the magical fish tale from Japanese anime master Hayao Miyazaki.

For parents, the voices of Tina Fey and Matt Damon add to the hipness quotient of the English-dubbed U.S. release. But unfortunately for fans of the visionary filmmaker of “Spirited Away” and “Princess Mononoke,” all that star power doesn’t necessarily serve the story.

While the Japanese sentences translate easily enough, the Japanese sensibility does not, and it makes it so much harder to enter into a foreign fantasy world inhabited by animistic sea-spirits and Shinto goddesses when the characters speak in the too-familiar voices of Liam Neeson and Betty White.

“Ponyo” is loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” The title character (Cyrus) is a tiny sea creature who’s described as a goldfish but looks more like a Beanie Baby ragdoll in red pajamas. She lives in an undersea castle with her father, a scary, skinny sourpuss of a wizard named Fujimoto (Neeson).

Ponyo runs away from home and comes to shore at a cliffside village where 5-year-old Sosuke (Jonas) scoops her up into a water pail and takes her home. Smitten, Ponyo decides she wants to become human, but in a second escape from her father, she unleashes a Pandora’s Box of primeval magic that upsets the balance of nature and threatens to destroy the world.

In contrast to the heightened realism of the Pixar generation of American computer animation, Miyazaki’s style remains steadfastly retro. The stylized lines and pastels are orchestrated into gorgeous paintings-in-motion. Scenes of the storming sea, with waves assuming the form of giant fish, are stunning in their simplicity.

It’s not clear how kids raised on “Shrek” and “The Incredibles” will respond to a fairy tale that feels like it comes, not just from another culture, but from an earlier time.