The Secret World Of Arrietty

It's very pretty (plus a song that is like a gumdrop melting in your ear). Girls may enjoy the sweet, rather wistful story more than most boys.

The fresh and simple story will win its share of young fans, though it lacks the disturbing adult elements might have attracted older audiences.

[The film] pulses with feeling for childhood and nature and develops a surprising amount of suspense considering it takes place around a single suburban home.

The Secret World of Arrietty is a marvelously captivating animated feature about very tiny people and the full-scale world they inhabit.

Yonebayashi gives Arrietty an excellent sense of balance, with the adventure aspects of the story, which feel legitimately dangerous providing well-paced contrast the film's more placid moments.

It's an enjoyable and attractive-looking film, but a little of that "Speed Racer" energy wouldn't have been such a bad thing.

Arrietty combines the bold, mature qualities of prior Ghibli fantasy outings like Spirited Away and Nausicaa with the droll humor of My Neighbor Totoro, resulting in a movie that is simultaneously thrilling and whimsically adorable.

While Arrietty lacks the originality and imagination of many in the Studio Ghibli catalogue, it has the heart, warmth and beauty of its predecessors and is certain to leave you feeling moved.

The Secret World of Arrietty is a magical and heartwarming story for older kids and adults. It's a secret world you will fall in love with.

Arrietty is brave and bright, exactly the sort of strange and wonderful being who might change someone's life forever.

It's the kind of children's film that's easy to overrate, simply for not treating the younger contingent of its audience like ADD-addled freaks, but far easier to enjoy as the handiwork of a relaxed master filmmaker.

What is so bewitching about the mostly static backgrounds in Arrietty is that they can be oxygenated at will by the smallest instance of judiciously placed movement, such as a single fluttering ladybird or a pair of jaunty butterflies in the foreground.