In a Shellnut
Satsuki and Mei move into an old house in the countryside, but the newfound proximity to ancient nature might be more than just a pleasant sight. This movie follows the two young children's adventures as they discover the hidden world that lies hidden beyond the trees and the incredible spirits that reside within it.

Strong Points
Very pretty artwork and some nice music - A Ghibli staple so far
A very relaxed watching experience suitable for all ages
Weak Points
A very relaxed watching experience suitable for all ages

Elaboration
My Neighbor Totoro is one of the more well known Ghibli films and marks a new style from the studio. It's certainly the lightest film yet and falls quite a ways from their earlier works which usually had a subtle (or perhaps not so subtle) message as opposed to the simple straightforwardness of this one. In a way, it makes the movie somewhat bland (hence why stars didn't get a glow up) but it's very clearly aimed at kids.

Technically though, it doesn't really do anything wrong. The art is nice, the voice acting is unremarkably good, the music makes a good background, and the pacing is well done. The real "issue" is that this movie isn't aimed at young adults, so it mostly fails to be relatable in any way, but that's no fault of the movie, so I refuse to detract any points from it. The next movie (Kiki's Delivery Service), which I have already seen, features a very similar story structure but an older character and the difference was immediately noticeable to my friend Bach.

One way that it does improve from the first two movies (I don't count Grave of the Fireflies because that's rather separate) is it's pacing. The two movies spent most of their runtime telling a story and setting up the last 10-15 minutes to be the main conflict. The issue lies mostly in that the resolution takes up the last thirty-ish seconds and is wrapped up as quickly as a present on Christmas Eve. It's a strong de-emphasis on the importance of the plot which is great when your audience isn't old enough to understand something so complicated anyways, but it can irk older more observant people (like, perhaps, an amateur reviewer). Totoro doesn't fall into that trap, mainly by completely throwing out any semblance of importance -provided you're not a child of course and don't relate to wanting to give your mom some corn) and thus there's barely any conflict to resolve in the first place. Excellent move.

Overall, it's just a nice watch and it makes for a good laugh if you've got someone who gets rather annoyed at children screaming (if that person is you, you may not enjoy it so much). It's also one of the classics so at the very least you can set some time aside to placate the Ghibli fans out there.