Meep.

Rating: 10/10 (28 June 2003)

This film is yet another masterpeice by my favourite director, Hayao Miyazaki. It's a beautiful adventure with very realistic-characters, and it has a unique feel to it; uplifting, but with depressing undertones. And to nit-pick at what someone else said, Totoro is not a gerble. Gerbles are rodents with long, rat-like tails. Totoro clearly is not a gerble. He's a spirit. Also, several people were complaining about the inadequicies of the Fox-dubbed DVD, and I just want to point out why the DVD is sub-par. A few years ago, Disney bought up the rights to several of Miyazaki's films (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky, and Kiki's Delivery Service to name a few, with more being prepared for release.) Way back when FOX bought the rights, in the early nineties, they only got the rights to produce a dubbed, full-screen version, I believe. (I don't recall this one ever having a theatrical run, but it just might have. I think it was direct to video.) Back then, very few people knew that anime was "more than just kids' cartoons," and the market for sub-titled anime was pretty small. Since DVD wasn't an issue back then, FOX didn't see a point in getting subtitling rights and wide-screen rights. (Also, for the early nineties, it's an EXCELLENT dub, and still is pretty good by today's standards.) Around the time that anime was getting more of a stronghold, Disney came along and made a deal with Studio Ghibli to get the rights to these movies. It's been aranged that Totoro's rights will be turned over to Disney in 2004, I believe, when it will be re-dubbed and re-released with all the extras and with other languages. Fox is just putting Totoro on DVD to a) make some money off of it while they can, and b) so that fans can have a copy of the Fox dub that won't deteriorate and will be able to withstand the years. Personally, I look foward to having both dubs on DVD and comparing them.