While "The Cat Returns" lacks the high stakes, breathtaking art and long running time of other Ghibli films, sometimes it's just relaxing to forget the world around you for little over an hour and dive into the magical nonsense of the Kingdom of Cats. The characters are well done, from Haru's insecure awkwardness to the Baron's gentleman calmness and Muta's flippant streetman's speech. REVIEW: This lesser known Studio Ghibli film surprised me positively with its lightness, humour and simple but beautiful animation style. The main positive message is about believing in yourself and accepting yourself as who you are.
Little to no swearing a character confesses she has a crush and the main storyline is about the main character being forced to marry a cat, but there is absolutely no sex in the movie cats are seen drinking something in a feast but it's not stated to be alcohol. ADVISORY: Not much scariness or violence two cats have a short sword duel with no notable injuries, the lower half of a tower is blown but the upper half doesn't collapse and no-one on top or ground is hurt, two cats are thrown out of a window but they are not seen getting hurt. While "The Cat Returns" is Studio Ghibli's shortest feature film to date (11 mins shorter than "My Neighbor Totoro"), it's worth a watch if you like humour, excitement and talking cats. Overall, this is just a heart-warming movie, that to me is nothing all that original or different(hence the three star rating), but would definitely be a nice one for kids or families to watch as a short fun film. This movie is suitable for everyone, it has nothing upsetting or inappropriate in it and I could imagine myself liking it from as young as when I was in nursery. I liked the protagonist, Haru, she did have her assertive moments, but then there were also moments where I felt like she was the damsel in distress, which I thought went a bit against her character. But, if you haven’t watched the previous film then you don’t need to worry about that, also you don’t need to have watched ‘Whisper of the Heart’ to watch this film, there isn’t all that much that connects them. The Baron to me is a bit like Sherlock Holmes with his British accent and mannerisms, the only thing I was a bit disappointed about was that the plot from ‘Whisper of the Heart’(the movie that ‘The Cat Returns’ is a spin-off of) isn’t picked up, with his missing girlfriend, which is a shame. I do just think that this is just a nice kid’s/family movie that you won’t have any problems with. This film was was extremely easy to watch and follow, with the storyline being typical of a normal movie.