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Spirited Away - Movie Review - Buy Movies - Rent Movies
In the far east where Anime and Manga dominate with bloodthirsty storylines and future dystopian worlds with cyborgs and robots being human’s saviour or exterminators, it is a pleasure to announce that there are Japanese animated movies aimed at family audiences and this is one of them. Chihiro is a little girl who on her way to her new home with her parents stumbled upon an abandoned theme park. After wandering around with her Mum and Dad, Chihiro starts to feel uneasy around this “ghostown”. This feeling turns into fright when her parents come across freshly cooked food and after gobbling it with no care in the world they turn into pigs! Unknown to Chihiro she has crossed into the realms of the spirits, a place where ghosts and all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures reside or go to for some R&R and where humans are most unwelcome. Our heroine enlists the help of Haku, who shows her how to survive in this altered reality, how to find her parents and the way to leave the spirit world. During her time there she meets identical twin witches, a Kermit the frog-a-like and a boiler room man/arachnid type… thing…person… basically a man with eight limbs! Chihiro’s naivety and kindness turn out to be an endearing and important quality for her survival in this unknown world, which helps her to be, accepted thus making more friends. This is truly a beautiful fantasy adventure. The characters are beautifully drawn; the story is wonderfully told and the score is perfect for every scene in the movie. There are enough magic, comic moments, eeriness and morals to enchant every member of the family. Sure, very young children may not understand what is going on and a running time of 2 hours may cause the kids to be agitated but as a family movie goes, you cannot do much better. Chihiro, Haku and Yubaba (one of the twin witches) have a lot of depth to them and this helps us to take an interest in them, which helps the story develop at a nice steady pace. The voices such as Daveigh Chase (Chihiro) and Jason Marsden (Haku) express all types of emotion adding different dimensions to our animated leads. Drawing influences from Lewis Carroll and Homer ‘ The Odyssey’ only adds to the excellence and intelligence of this film. (The scene where Chihiro’s parents turn to pigs is similar to where Odysseus crew came across the Goddess Cicre. She tricked and drugged some of his party to erase their memories of their homeland and put a spell on then so they would turn into swine). An advantage with an animated movie of this sort is that unlike its live action counterparts, is that it can be viewed without subtitles. It is extremely easy to watch dubbed and not at all off-putting. Spirited Away is a fantastic family movie that is thoroughly enjoyable. Guaranteed, adults will enjoy this as much… if not more than the children. This film was a joy to watch displaying there is still a family market for hand drawn animation. Leon Nicholson
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Joe - I don't usually watch animated films but I enjoyed this movie - it looks fantastic.
