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'Howl's Moving Castle': Spectacular visual style is enchanting

The castle in the new animated feature "Howl's Moving Castle" is a wondrously ungainly thing that looks like it was designed by a dream team made up of Jules Verne, Terry Gilliam and Hieronymus Bosch.

No wonder. It was dreamed up by Hayao Miyazaki, the amazing anime master behind "Princess Mononoke" and the Oscar-winning "Spirited Away."

Walt Disney Pictures 'Howl's Moving Castle' B+ The verdict: More mind-blowing animation from the director of "Spirited Away." Director: Hayao Miyazaki Voices: Emily Mortimer, Christian Bale, Billy Crystal, Lauren Bacall Run time: 110 minutes Release date: June 10, 2005 Rating: PG for frightening images and brief mild language. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate "Howl's Moving Castle"   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Even if the film isn't as good as its predecessors, it's still better than 90 percent of whatever else is around.

"Howl's" is set in an imaginative mishmash of Victorian England, "Merry Widow-ish" Mittel Europe and some strange hybrid world where wizards and witches are a given. In one charming exchange, a little girl shows up at the castle and politely says, "My mom sent me to pick up a spell."

The plot is convoluted even by Miyazaki's standards. Sophie (voiced by Emily Mortimer) is a diligent teenage hatmaker who's pretty used to not being the pretty one (that would be her older sister). However, she's pretty enough to be harassed in a threatening manner by a couple of soldiers. Howl (Christian Bale), a wizard with the golden mane, sexy pout and self-absorption of a glam-rock star, rescues her. His action inadvertently incurs the jealous wrath of the Witch of the Waste (Lauren Bacall), who turns Sophie into a 90-year-old crone (Jean Simmons).

From there, well, a lot of stuff happens. A whole lot of stuff. Seeking to reverse the curse, Sophie joins the household inside Howl's moving castle, which includes a touchy fire demon named Calcifer (Billy Crystal) and a young boy, Markl (Josh Hutcherson), a sorcerer's apprentice of sorts.

Meanwhile, outside the castle, a senseless war is being waged and wizards and witches are expected to pitch in like everyone else. For Howl, that means becoming a hawk-like creature — the danger being, every time he assumes that guise, it's harder to transform back into a human. Eventually, he could forget he ever was human.

Finally, there's layers of palace intrigue, most of it orchestrated by the sleekly evil Madame Suliman (Blythe Danner).

One immediate weakness is the voice casting. Simmons and Mortimer are just fine. Bacall is better than fine, using her patented growl to good effect.

However, Bale, soon to be seen as the new Batman, has a voice too deep, too, well, manly for the sprite-ish, wispy Howl. Crystal is a total miscalculation. His Borscht Belt inflections, which have served him so well in movies and Oscar telecasts, are out of place here — a drearily mundane sound in an otherwise magical world.

More problematically, the movie is based on a popular children's book by British author Diana Wynne Jones. She may be a good writer, but she's no J.K. Rowling and she's certainly no Miyazaki. Her pedestrian storytelling can't begin to compare with the astonishing narratives of the director's earlier films, which he also wrote.

Still, the procession of enchanting and spectacular images is intoxicating. A march up the royal palace's never-ending steps. Nasty blobs in boater hats. The various portals that connect to the castle via a color-coded wheel. One turn takes you to a lake bounded by an Impressionist field of flowers. Another to a tranquil seaside town. A third to the gleaming bustle of a big city.

The film's exuberant visual style is, in a way, ironic. One message "Howl's Moving Castle" wishes to impart is, beauty is more than skin deep. But in Miyazaki's hands, mere surfaces transport us into a kind of animated ecstasy.