A beautiful work of art for young and old

Rating: 9/10 (23 July 2004)

I took my six-year-old son to see "My Neighbour Totoro" at a film festival recently and about halfway through he loudly announced to the full house that "This is a GREAT movie". A somewhat embarrassing moment for me, but I think few of the 500-odd crowd would have disagreed.
It must surely rate somewhere at the apex of the cartoonist's art. The scenes are magnificently detailed, and the action portrays real humans of the kind we all know and love, seamlessly moving into the fantastic realms that we would all _like_ to know and love.
Aside from the beautiful artwork, the music supports the action all the way through, and there are several good stories woven into the movie as well.
The copy I saw was subtitled in excellent English and some of the younger audience may have trouble with that, although they would probably still find the movie very enjoyable.