Dir./Scr: Hayao Miyazaki

I’ve rented this Oscar-winning film out several times with the intention of
watching it and finally, last night, I did.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere how much I detest the cutesy style of most anime.
This is despite the fact that Akira remains one of my bestest films ever
but, fortunately, my desire to watch films is always outweighed by any
particular feelings I have about a style/genre/actor. A good thing too as
this is a film I’m glad I’ve seen. What’s more, Spirited Away does a lot
to diminish that loathing.

What can I say? It was (mostly) all good. The story is really a sort of
fucked up Oriental Alice in Wonderland. But with heavy appliance of
Miyazaki’s incredibly imaginative (and more than a little disturbed)
vision, it’s a tale that totally entranced me. I know I can’t wait for my
son to be of an age where he can watch it too, although I don’t know when
that might be as I’d imagine that the crones Yubaba and Zeniba, might prove
to be a little scary.

If it’s mostly all good, what’s the bad? Well, to be honest, it’s my
general dissatisfaction (for want of a better word) at Japanese animation
styles. I haven’t seen any other Miyazaki films yet it all seemed so
familiar. It’s like all anime movies have to follow certain conventions
about the way that characters move and how background has to appear and so
on. But this is only a gripe I have about it and not one that ruined the
enjoyment of the film for me.

One thing I would like to point out is that the English dubbing was sorted
out by Pixar head honcho John Lasseter and so features the likes of John
Ratzenburger, Lauren Holly and Michael Chilkis providing voices. Not only
that but they made a real effort to match the voices to the animation far
better than just about any other English dubbed anime film I’ve seen. I
tend to always watch foreign films in original languages with subtitles
where possible but checked this out when I noticed Lasseter’s name on the
credits. More films should be done like this for those people who do tend
to shy away from foreign language films.

So all in all, a marvellous film, full of imagination, wit and great
vision.