Spirited Away | Review

The best in animation since Woody and Buzz Lightyear.

Bad news,-your mother and father are now squealing for food, if you forget your name you’ll end up cleaning cesspools of brown colored substances for the rest of your existence and oh yeah-your new neighborhood in comprised of a vast number of creatures and monsters who outnumber humans by a billion to one. Beyond this description there are other ways to illustrate the imaginative genius or madness behind Japan’s Spirited Away-the top import of 2002. Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki’s Golden Berlin Bear prize-winning feature is ultimately a warped recreation of an Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy in Oz where we follow along the footsteps of the 10-year old protagonist who is lead away from the normal family life with an Audi hatchback and into the dark tunnel that takes us on a journey into lala land. She innocently downs a red berry (acid drop?) and she finds herself in a modern bathhouse for very tired spirits.

Chihiro (Daveigh Chase) is a strong character -the film introduces her as scared child with much vulnerability, but her beliefs in genuine goodness of people and ultimately her kindness for the spirits are her weapons of battle for defying the almost sadistic system. This heroine is perhaps the primary reason why the pre-teens should see this film; however I have a hesitation in calling this a family film, after all just because it is animation doesn’t mean that it is suited for the little ones, as the noble Beavis & Butthead once demonstrated. ‘Spirited’ has a few hard to handle scenes-specifically during the sequence where her parents turn into violently pigs and the bloodied razor-edged teeth her injured friend Haku and this is accompanied by a storyline which is a lot more noir than expected, but then again Japanese animation gave us the very adult Akira.

In a classic animated Japanese style-this film resonates with its beautiful painted visuals accompanied by a piano-ed film score showing a very imaginative world all with a touch of the bizarre to the point where you start asking questions like what was this dude on when he made the picture. In a nutshell this animated pleasure is best described with in one word ‘fantasy’,- breaking the typical of fairy tales, talking animals-animation from the U.S. Let us begin by taking a sample inventory of his visual delights: amphibian-like toads smoking cigarettes, a six-armed foreman running the boiler room, mythic dragons that fight off paper airplanes, distorted versions of very hungry Teletubbies and a disturbingly large Jabba the Hut sized baby-. All these little penciled creations come off looking a lot more dynamic than the CGI creatures and monsters found in Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.

Miyazaki’s first foray with the 1999 Princess Mononoke failed to make a mark with American audiences-but after breaking box-office records in its homeland there was no way that distribution wouldn’t be properly amended in the states. Child entertainment powerhouse Disney picked up the picture and now they can expect to pick up an academy award for Best Animated Feature. Arguably without a doubt if you are going to see only one animation film or prep yourself for the Oscars nominees then, Spirited Away should be the one.

Rating 3.5 stars