More than meets the eye

Rating: Null/10 (21 October 1999)

A lot of people are pegging this cool flick as an "eco-epic" or a "save the trees" cautionary tale. It isn't. The film paints all the characters in this film as having reasonable motives for what they do; indeed, the "villain" of the film, Lady Eboshi, actually makes the most sense when you think about it, ultimately making this a film about people and their struggles.
The screenplay is solid. It follows the rules of the dramatic paradigm very well but you do not notice it. The pacing is natural, not mechanical. The feel of the film reminds one of those classic movies made in the 60s and 70s, where slow, meticulous pacing was the order of the day, not a densely-packed, "something must happen every two minutes" action film like the ones we get today. The only problem is that yes, the beginning of Act III is a bit stalled--but many classic movies have had this problem. The Godfather is one of them.
The dubbing is as best as it can be--Gaiman translated this from archaic Japanese, a sort of Japanese Shakespeare-type language. A few changes are a bit irksome, but those who get picky should know that dubbing is extremely difficult.