Everything a movie should be. This is true cinema.

Rating: Null/10 (27 July 2000)

After the recent invasion of Dragon Balls and Pokemons, somehow i had in my mind the idea that this was going to be another commercial crappy manga for kids. Despite that i decided to go see it and check for myself why the movie reviewers where praising this movie so much, rating it FIVE stars out of five.
Unfortunately, in my country, (Portugal), this movie is playing only once a day in the early afternoons. As usual in Portugal, animation is treated all equal. Animated movies >little kids, and so this movie plays here in the few theaters that bought it (4 ), right about after lunch in little children time slot. What is realy amazing, is that i´m sure the Portuguese distributors of PRINCESS MONONOKE even saw the movie, because if they did, they would notice, (or perhaps not), that this is not a movie for little children. First because there are some very explicit gore scenes, where arms and heads are chopped off occasionally along the whole movie, there´s violence (and i don´t mean just action violence), reference to more adult themes, (plenty of the female characters are ex-prostitutes) and a few more details like this.
I don´t have any problem in taking any kid to see a story like this, but i´m sure there are a bunch of conservative parents out there, that by this time have just forbidden their kids of watching Pokemon, thinking that somehow Mangas are all the same.
But PRINCESS MONONOKE isn´t a kids movie just because of this. Above all ,it´s because of its plot and storyline wich gets to complex for little kids to follow. One thing that amused me a lot, was watching some kids in the front row, totally confused because they couldn´t figure out who were the bad guys ! Others were totally bored and only paid real atention to the movie in the action scenes complaining all the time the movie was boring and not very easy to understand.
In fact, actually, this movie has probably the best screenplay currently displayed in any movie right now. I wish i could find a non-animated movie out there at this moment with a screenplay capable of touching this one in quality and complexity. Not Mission Impossible for sure. ( And then it´s the animation films who are considered ,stuff for kids ! :-) )
I won´t get in the story of PRINCESS MONONOKE because part of pleasure of watching this movie, is going to see it without any clue whatsoever. I´m just going to say, it´s a very ecological movie, set in medieval china (i guess), and where spirits and anything magical, is treated like just another thing made by Mother Nature and not like some supernatural characters that we usualy find everywhere. There are no real heroes in here, and no real bad guy in sight. It´s a slow paced movie, with a brilliant animation, a very intimist plot, a little bit of crude violence (but depicted in a very "natural" way, not just there to show off), excelent characters, fantastic landscapes and a pretty good soundtrack that goes almost unoticed. And this movie is BIG. It´s not your regular 75/80 minutes for kids. PRINCESS MONONOKE plays for about 130 minutes.
If you like Manga, (and i don´t mean Dragon Ball), real Manga like AKIRA, or WINGS OF HONEAMISE, you can´t miss this movie, because it´s actualy a brilliant movie. Definetely one of the best this year. If you are a fan ,of an old Manga movie called WARRIORS OF THE WIND, then PRINCESS MONONOKE is from the same director, and the style is more or less the same. I read this director is not going to make any more manga movies , (WHY?!!), and that this was his goodbye to animation features. :-(
Well let me tell you, this is what we can call, going out in style ! Brilliant movie, (just not for every audiences).
Don´t miss it.