Carl the Critic: Spirited Away

Expectations/Experience: Since this is a film that won an Oscar ^TM I was expecting this movie to be amazing! I had always considered "Lion King," to be the greatest animated movie ever made, but I was expecting that this film would instantly blow me away the same way that "Howl's Moving Castle" had done. But I guess it was probably this expectation that made me severely disappointed. When You have high expectations for a movie, you often are disappointed that the film was not what everyone says it is.

I am not saying this is a horrible film, but it is a film that only works for a certain audience. It is like "The Triplets of Belleville" with it's formalistic style and exaggerated characters, but then again it's an animated film, what do you expect. But movies like "Spirited Away," and "Triplets of Belleville" both are movies that are really out there, with their strange and mysterious characters. Often times in "Spirited Away," I was often surprised at what was happening before my eyes.

Story: It's basically a Japanese story of "Alice and Wonderland," about a whiny little brat, named Chihiro, who is moving into a new house. On the way there, the little girl's idiot parents had realized they had taken a wrong turn and had found themselves at an abandoned amusement park. The father, apparently not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, says "let's go check it out," the second worse thing to say in a horror film, right next to "I'll be right back." So the Mom, Dad, and Brat all go to the amusement park only to find that it has some freshly cooked food. The Mom and Dad, help themselves while Chihiro yells at them. Chihiro then wonders off and finds a guy who tells her to leave before it's too late. So the little girl goes back to get her parents and finds that they have turned into pigs. Then suddenly floating pieces of paper that wear clothes appear and that she can't leave because she is now trapped. She then meets up with the boy who told her to leave and he tries to help her by getting her a job with the woman responsible for turning her parents into pigs. As Chihiro falls deeper down the rabbit hole, she meets weirder and weirder characters, including a mysterious figure named "No-Face."

Critique: I found this movie very hard to enjoy personally, mainly because it was really out there. Critics of the time were giving it praise so obviously its a classic. Its animation is superb (like "Triplets of Belleville"), It has a beautiful score by Joe Hisaishi, it has the classic "Alice in Wonderland" story and meandering structure. Both the Japanese and American voice acting are very well done and the animals in the film had a great motif of the different personalities in the film. My biggest problem was that it is a 2 hour movie, too many characters, moments where the movie just stops with no progression, and at times there is a random moments that make absolutely no sense (to me at least.)

Overall : This movie I had to give a 9.0 out of 10, because it is a movie that only works with a certain, but this audience is not me. I do recommend this film for people who enjoy the work of Hayao Miyazaki, because his unique and artistic eye is clearly seen in this movie.