realintheory It looks nice.. otherwise.. spare me. It's infantislistic poppycock. Honestly.. we are alone.. we are not to be saved by turtles. We can dream. We can love nature. We can love each other. But we don't need films that a 4 year old would yawn at to be reminded that life is worth living.

davidcshannon I don't regret seeing this, but I wouldn't have missed much if I hadn't.Positive Spin: A long, beautiful moving painting. Presents a fable without imposing meaning or purpose, allowing you to find your own.Negative Spin: A lot of beautiful pictures that don't communicate much. The characters say essentially nothing the entire movie. They don't express much non-verbally either, besides the most basic of emotions. Although there are scenes, there's essentially no plot. Inexplicable events occur, and are never explained. The movie ends abruptly with no closure.

veinctor Good movie that differentiates it self from many others.The lack of dialogue would help you concentrate on the visuals. The movie is fairly slow but the slow parts is what create the feeling of realism.The realism however, clashes with the surreal stuff that occur later on in the movie. I found my self trying to understand what is going on, and while waiting for answers, I couldn't enjoy the movie. I got annoyed by things like "the invisible force that destroys the rafts" and "why the dead turtle turns into a woman and has kids"? You wont get any answers even after the film ends. The more I think of it, it reminds me of the series Lost. You can only speculate that this wasn't taking place in the realm of reality. You can also guess that it wasn't in the hero's imagination because crazy things happened after his death. One can only conclude that it was a parable.I look around the net to find a compelling explanation. Some said the turtle was the nature helping him and that the woman was the "good times of his life". Most of the reviews praising the deeper warm meanings. After some thought, I disagree. I mean... the turtle was stopping him from escaping, so what if he tried to leave the island one more time, after the turtle died? To me, the meaning is a more sinister one: The island is the place where we are born. The turtle is the government or the society that stops your dreams of living a life as you want it to be. It pins you down on an island, leaving you defenseless against all odds, and wants you to get a woman and be a family man. This is what society expects of you. You cant escape, you cant win. The only way out is death. Nobody will ever help you. And your son is taken over by government agents (green turtles) and conform to the "norm" as well. Wham, mind blown!

Vanilor This is the most barren, boring, and tedious of a film that Studio Ghibli has ever made. I am a long time fan of Studio Ghibli, with Spirited Away being my favorite, but it seems they are really struggling lately. They are branching out into directions most people don't want. The Red Turtle strays into the realm of avant- garde cinema, in that there is no dialogue, no plot, no explanation for anything you see, and no pay-off for sitting through an hour and a half of ambiance. I don't understand what they were trying to accomplish by completely avoiding dialogue. Dialogue is crucial for character development and communication between characters. Cast Away did a great job of getting around the problem of only having one character, by creating the character of Wilson the volleyball. Imagine Cast Away without Wilson, without any tension, and moving along at a snail's pace, with an ending as meaningless and nonsensical as the ending of Lost, and you've got the Red Turtle. It's a pointless, meaningless film, and it's a black mark on Studio Ghibli's reputation.