Overrated

Rating: 5/10 (25 May 2008)

This is one of the most overrated anime movies of all time. I think most of the high ratings comes from people who were either stunned by the animation or give it a 10 just because it's anime. If you don't believe me about the second part, just type in the name of any generic shallow shonen anime and I can almost guarantee it will have at least a 7/10 rating. *cue 1000 "No this review was not helpful" clicks*
To get this out of the way: The animation is great and overall it's not a bad movie. It's worth a watch.
However it's also really slow and dull in many parts plot wise. There are several times where I just wished it would get to the climax so the movie would end.
The main characters are pretty 2 dimensional(San and Ashitaka) and I found myself wishing that the movie would spend time on the side characters who are more interesting. San is the heroine who was raised by wolves and hates humans. If you've seen any anime with a generic tsundere(Wikipedia if you don't know what I mean) girl then you basically know her character and everything she'll do right away. Ashitaka is the hero who really has no back story and has a painfully dull "PLEASE EVERYONE STOP FIGHTING" personality.
The point of the movie, like a few of Miyazaki's other movies is that the environment is cool and we shouldn't burn plastic in our full size SUVs while spraying aerosol cans out the window. While that's not a bad message for a movie to tell, Princess Mononoke does it really heavy handedly and seems like it wants to make you feel bad for human progress.
Anyway, most of this ranting is to offset the hundreds of "THIS MOVIE IS THE BEST THING EVER" reviews and I honestly don't dislike the movie THAT much. I just think it could be a lot better for what the hype surrounding it promises.