Film - An anime wizard in fabulous drop earrings? How improving, writes Howl's Moving Castle (U) Howl's Moving Castle (U)

It never ceases to amaze me how a generation of the left breastfed on semiotics, postmodernism and Jean Baudrillard has turned a sharp right when it comes to pop culture for its own children, eventually meeting up - in some safe, unconsciously agreed-upon middle ground - with their Daily Mail counterparts. Up-to-date Dad might own an iPod and modern Mum may tote an Apple PowerBook, yet you can bet that little Jack will most certainly not be receiving the latest Xbox upgrade this Christmas, but rather a good, old-fashioned book. It will be a copy of something solid: Great Expectations, or maybe Favourite Greek Myths - anything "improving" as op-posed to mindlessly entertaining. It takes Goebbels-force pester power to compel these grown-ups to take the kids to see The Incredibles (too much hard-sell hype) or Madagascar (too much merchandising) or Robots (too much Robin Williams). Besides, these days too much fun can be threatening. Which doubtless explains why these same adults were happily dragging the entire family to Howl's Moving Castle this past weekend. As animation goes, it isn't too much fun, but it does have the proper playground credentials.

Which are? Well, Howl's Moving Castle is Japanese and anime, and therefore automatically more artistic than its US counterparts. The right cultural cachet gives you a lot of leeway. The arthritic way characters such as the Witch of the Wasteland move may be only slightly more fluid than Pokemon: the first movie, but that hasn't stopped reviewers from denying the evidence of their own eyes and invoking the film's "painterly imagination". The single visual coup is the flying fortress itself: a grotesque Terry Gilliam creation that is both monster and heavy metal, totally at odds with every landscape it finds itself in. And let's not forget that Howl's Moving Castle is the latest from Hayao Miyazaki, the director responsible for the acclaimed Princess Mononoke and the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, fairy tales for little girls who don't mind subtitles.

And I do mean little girls. The gorgeous, pouting heroines of Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away were barely pubescent. Big-eyed and tremulous against Miyazaki's ornate, heavy, sensual backgrounds (he's fussy for gold, marble, fur, feathers, tapestries) their ecstatic suffering had a frankly pervy feel you won't find in such tweenie self-empowerment fables as Pocahontas and The Little Mermaid. Perhaps reacting to prurient speculation, Sophie, the heroine of Howl's Moving Castle, is suspiciously quick to claim that she's 18 and no beauty, though she is no beauty in the same fashion as girls are supposed to be plain in Cinderella stories. And although I realise it's a woman's prerogative to lie about her age, Sophie abuses the privilege. If she's 18, she's not drawn that way. We're talking 12, tops.

Miyazaki has an escape clause. Barely ten minutes in, Sophie is put under a spell, becomes a 90-year-old hag and goes to work for the wizard Howl, though there will be those of us in the back row wondering why he isn't called Scream. Anime may have a tradition of teasing androgyny, but isn't Howl unmistakably homosexual? Weighing less than a boy band, the wizard wears fabulous emerald drop earrings and becomes quite literally unglued when Sophie moves his bathroom unguents, causing him to dye his blond hair black. "What's the point of living if you're not beautiful?" Howl howls. "My, he's dramatic," Sophie responses, when what she means is melodramatic. Or metrosexual. If this is a relationship, it's not Beauty and the Beast. It's Will and Grace. Or perhaps, given the abrupt age difference, Harold and Maude.

Unfortunately, it's not as if the film were toying with gender stereotypes. This could be the only full-length cartoon of recent years that begins with the female lead pursuing a career (Sophie is a milliner) and ends with her finding fulfilment through cooking and cleaning. Imagine watching Mulan in reverse. Sophie is so endlessly self-sacrificing that she even cares for the witch who cursed her. And Howl isn't so much of a ladyboy that he doesn't go to war, periodically returning to let Sophie nurse his wounds. Sophie behaves like a geisha-in-training when really you'd prefer her to act more like the ghostly wife from The Grudge: justifiably revengeful bordering on pissed off.

In fairness, some of this confusion might have to do with Miyazaki working from adapted material for the first time. I don't know if Diana Wynne Jones's novel is set in Wales, but the film appears to be. Why would Wales be battling France, though? Is it something Charlotte Church said? And what about the period dress? The clothes feature frills and bustles while the airships are clearly Orwellian. It's 1894 and 1984, too, which ought to be magical but just isn't. However, there is a sort of timely anti-war message, which is probably all some concerned parents will want. Still, when the next Miyazaki film hits town, they might consider locking up their daughters . . . before he does.

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