Review: Spirited Away

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Finally saw Spirited Away. Sadly, I was not as enamored of it as everyone else is.

It has, as one would expect from a Miyazaki film, gorgeous art, a wide variety of imaginative creatures, magic, sympathetic characters, an environmental message (much subtler than usual), and good animation. But it never really engaged me, and it felt really long—too many plots and subplots stuffed into the movie. Chihiro (the protagonist) seemed too whiny to me for the first 45 minutes or so; it made sense for the character to be scared and upset—the situation was really spooky—but I wanted the voice actor to provide slightly more range of emotion. Given that she also did the voice for Lilo in Lilo & Stitch (though I didn't recognize the voice 'til I looked her up in the IMDB), I know she's capable of a much wider range.

Miyazaki in general is kinda hit-or-miss for me. I loved the visuals and the flying parts in Nausicaä but always found the story hard to follow (though that may not be a fair assessment; I suspect it makes more sense in Japanese, and I did quite like the English-translated comic book); thought My Neighbor Totoro was charming (and loved the cat-bus); enjoyed Kiki's Delivery Service a fair bit; haven't seen more than a few minutes of Laputa or Lupin or any of the others; and I'm afraid Princess Mononoke didn't do much for me.

There were things I loved about Spirited Away, though. The soot-spiders were totally charming; I really liked Kamaji the boiler-room guy (visuals, character, physical body design, and the English voice acting by David Ogden Stiers); I liked the stop-the-frog effect used by Haku early on; lots of small nice/surreal/spooky touches throughout the movie. Certainly not bad by any means; I just didn't fall in love with it the way pretty much everyone else seems to have. I liked Lilo & Stitch more.

3 Responses to “Review: Spirited Away”

  1. Celia

    We watched Princess Mononoke at Clarion, so any potential ‘not that cool’ feelings were stomped out by the running commentary that only a roomful of SF/F fans can provide. 🙂 (Minority Report, we spent a good 15 minutes disecting in the parking lot afterwards. One piece of paper in the whole darn movie?) I’m simulatneously excited and scared about Howl’s Moving Castle, which is one of my favorite books. Now I understand how all those Tolkien readers felt.

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  2. Zak

    I’ve followed a lot of the reviews for Spirited Away, and it seems that it just doesn’t click for some people. It did for me, and I loved it to death.

    I wish I could really clearly describe why it worked for me, but I just can’t. I was entranced with it and never came out of it. Still haven’t, really. I had no trouble following the plot, but it follows a dream-logic that made sense to me.

    As for ‘Nausicaa’, which version of have you seen? There’s a US version called Warriors of the Wind which is horribly butchered, but even the Japanese version is really only about 1/4th of the whole work and doesn’t really cover most of what Miyazaki was getting at. Princess Mononoke was a much more mature exploration of all the same themes, and is actually the best exploration I’ve ever seen of the tension between naturism and technology.

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  3. Jenn Reese

    Spirited Away also “clicked” with me. I enjoyed it much more than Princess Mononoke. But then, I pretty much adore everything that Miyazaki has done, inlcuding Totoro, Kiki, Castle Cagliostro, Nausica (read the comics before I saw it), Laputa… Sigh. I think he’s bloody brilliant.

    True, I could have done with less vomiting in the latest, but I pretty much sat on the edge of my seat with my eyes wide and my mouth hanging open the whole time. And Haku!! Seeing a dragon in flight, I finally understood the phrase we use to describe the dragon in martial arts: “Ride the Wind.”

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