The movie's still great - Miyazaki's never made a bad film and this is one of his very best -, but this release of it, like every release after 2010, has a few issues, namely the fact that the excellent English dub has been butchered. See, back in 2010, long after the dub had been produced in '98, some studio head jackass at Disney decided to heavily alter the dub. Say goodbye to a whole bunch of Hartman's lines, because they have now been silenced. When he says, "They're calling you an egg-stealer and you don't wanna know else," "and you don't wanna know what else" has been silenced. To add insult to injury, this was Hartman's
very last film due to his unfortunate murder at the hands of his very own wife. Because of this, it is dedicated to his memory. For a second, I was miffed because I thought GKIDS, who now owns the North American rights, had removed the dedication; thankfully, it turns out they had only moved it. Might as well say goodbye to Sydney Forest's songs,
Soaring and
I'm Gonna Fly, too, because you-know-who decided they had to go, too. A shame, really since they have an infectious charm and I must confess I knew both, especially
I'm Gonna Fly, by heart before I even saw the film. And all of this screwing around in the sound has clearly had negative effect on the sound quality since the altered dub occasionally emits an unnatural buzz as if the actors are talking into a fan. By simply looking up "Kiki audio defect," you will find a comparison with the unaltered dub housed on the original 2003 DVD where this was not an issue. It mostly clears up and it's not like it's there for every frame of film but still. There are some who will defend it, but what Disney did in 2010 is a major affront, up there with removing the expanded score from
Castle in the Sky, to the fans who grew up watching the film with the unaltered dub. Not only that, it craps all over the work the English-language cast and crew put into making the dub. There's no reason for what they did. Every time Disney dubbed one of his films Miyazaki was right there giving his approval; if he told them he didn't approve, they had to change it on the spot and
Kiki was no exception. Thankfully, what's left is still really good. Dunst, whose real-life nickname is Kiki, makes for a great, well, Kiki. She brings the character to life and truly captures all her hopes, dreams and struggles. Hartman is also excellent as Jiji; I just wish we had
all of his lines. Much the same can be said for Matthew Lawrence as Tombo, Garofalo as Ursula, Tress MacNeille - who also dubbed Obaba in
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and the boss's wife in
Castle in the Sky - as Osono, the late great Debbie Reynolds as a nice old lady, and Brad Garrett ("...Everybody loves Raymond.") in a bit part as Osono's husband. Okay, I guess it can be said that you still get
most of the dub here and it's also stacked pretty solidly with special features, so it's worth getting just to own
Kiki's Delivery Service and enjoy the beautiful animation in HD and Hisaishi's music score comes through loud and clear without issue. That said, some English-speaking fans will take issue with the fact that the original Streamline dub, which is said to be quite good, is not on the disc, though that's not much of a change from the norm since the Streamline dub of
Totoro hasn't been available since a crappy pan-and-scan DVD from back in the '90s, the Streamline dub of
Castle in the Sky was only available on the very first Japanese DVD way back when and
Kiki's Streamline dub hasn't been available since the Laserdisc days. But since I want the whole dub, not just "most of it," I'm still going to be hunting down the old DVD for a (hopefully) decent price. Later, guys.
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. The story behind it is impressive along with the fact it was almost all improv. McKay wanted to make a movie with Reilly and Ferrell in bunk beds.
