So, on Saturday I saw the new Studio Ghibli film, Earwig and the Witch. This was something that I was pretty excited to see simply because of who it’s by and parts of the trailer looked interesting. But by the time I left the theater, I fully regretted seeing the movie, especially in theaters as it ended up becoming the worst theater experience of my life.

There were two aspects of the experience that weren’t great. The first was the movie itself and the second was the theater experience.

Let’s talk about the movie itself. There were so many aspects about the actual movie that I really liked but there were also so many cons that just made it bad. Right now as I’m writing this, the movie has a 34% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I don’t think it’s as bad as everyone is saying, but it was still pretty bad as a whole.

First off you have the animation. Here’s the thing, for the most part, the animation was okay. The only thing that I didn’t like about the animation was Earwig. I don’t know what it was about her but many of the models and expressions that were used for her were bad, weird, or just felt out of place.

But that’s saying a lot because I thought the rest of the animation was either okay or good. For instance, I really liked all the different animations for the Mandrake, I think all the scenes with him in them looked great.

I also really liked parts of the humor and the music too. But everything apart from that was pretty bad. Other than the Mandrake, I felt the characters were either bad or the story was bad, or all the other stuff was bad. For instance, Earwig herself is just such a horrible person and I hated her nearly the entire person, it really felt like she was the villain the whole time.

The story also made very little sense. It felt like the entire thing was disjointed and it felt like there were a bunch of different plot points that were only played with for a few minutes before being given up on. The movie was also too short and it felt like it ended way too abruptly and in the worst way possible.

As for the theater experience, that was also terrible. For starters, I was a couple minutes late. The showtime was 7 and it was 7:03. But you know how they show trailers before the movie starts? I thought I would be fine and I asked the person at the front what time the actual movie starts.

The people who sell tickets also have a list of things like what time the actual movie starts after trailers, what time it ends with trailers, and a bunch of other things. They said the movie itself starts at 7:20 so I went and used the bathroom and got some popcorn. But guess what? When I got into the theater the movie was already playing. I thought it just started but after the movie I found out that they removed all the trailers for some reason and the movie started at 7.

So the person lied and I missed the first 15 or so minutes. There was also a lot of misleading information. During the movie I was under the expectation that it would start at 7:20 and the runtime was 1 hour and 45 minutes, so it would had ended between 9 and 9:05. So you bet I was shocked when the credits were rolling at 8:20, a whole 40-45 minutes early.

What I discovered was that the runtime was a lie. On the theater website, it says 1 hour and 45 minutes but on Wikipedia the runtime is only 1 hour and 22 minutes. After the credits ended, there was a documentary where people talked about the movie in Japanese.

Even if I wasn’t late and I got to the movie before 7, it would have been such a big letdown, expecting to see a 105 minute movie but only getting an 82 minute movie and some bonus content.

If you’ve ever gone to see a movie in theaters that has bonus content, you’ll know in advance that there’s bonus content and it always plays after the movie, it’s not supposed to be unexpected and within the actual movie itself.

I paid $18 for what I thought was going to be an hour and 45 minute experience. But thanks to the obliviousness of the staff and the false marketing, I was in my seat for maybe 55 to 60 minutes total.

I was so excited to see this movie that this was my first time paying for a movie in a long time. Since the middle of 2018, I’ve been paying $20 or $25 a month to see unlimited movies. But this one was not eligible so I had to pay full price and I was willing to do that.

But it ended up being such a letdown that I got a refund before even leaving the theater, which is something that I’ve never done before. It was just such a bad experience overall.

I appreciate your candor on the movie review, zanderlex:. I may not have seen the movie itself, but I did happen to see the Wikipedia entry about it. And what I've perceived is not too surprising to see the number of factors as to why critics greatly dislike it, in my honest opinion:

- Since it was the first full 3D computer-generated animated film by Studio Ghibli, I can see why longtime Studio Ghibli fans might be put off by this abrupt transition from cel animation.
- The movie's director, Gorō Miyazaki (son of Hayao Miyazaki) was not only reluctant to follow in his father's footsteps, but despite his mixed bag of experience in animation consulting, storyboarding, and directing, his constant reliance on the younger staff without wanting to consult with the production veterans (not to mention the belief in being the only member of the studio with the knowledge of creating CG animation) have contributed to the low ratings of the film.

Regarding the theater experience, as a staff member of one, I am dismayed to see a movie theater demonstrate its incompetence by allowing its own staff to be out of the loop when it comes to the rule-of-thumb of 15-20 minutes of movie trailers before the feature presentation (with certain exceptions, especially in special showings and live events; NCM's Fathom Events, in my case). The remedy would have been encouraging the staff to take the initiative in having essential information, but there are occasions that the damage has already been done, and lessons will have been learned by taking the necessary steps in order to ensure that mistakes like this don't happen again.

At any rate, thank you for sharing that with us.