A fantastic fantasy journey

Rating: 8/10 (18 December 2015)

"Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi" or "Spirited Away" is probably the most famous work (especially abroad) by Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki, also because he won an Academy Award for it and non-English-language films winning in the Best Animated Feature category is certainly not the rule, which makes it an even more exceptional achievement. The film is already almost 15 years old and runs for roughly 2 hours. A little girl enters a fantastic world with her parents, but their greed makes them transform into pigs right away, the parents only, not the girl. And after that, she gets deeper and deeper into that fantastic world, makes friends and foes, both of which are the most fascinating creatures, including witches, dragons and many other mythical figures.
One of the aspects I liked most about this film was that basically no character was either completely black or white. Even the evil witch loves the big baby and has to follow certain rules in her last scene for example. She has a good twin sister by the way, also an interesting inclusion. The animation is really good and memorable here and I personally believe this film is a great choice if you want to take a deeper look into Studio Ghibli movies, something that is considered the best animation film production studio these days together with the big famous American Pixar company. You can certainly see a lot of heart in their works and, hands down, it does not get much more creative than "Spirited Away".
All in all, this film never dragged and that is always a decent achievement for films that cross the 2-hour mark. It has some nice lessons on friendship, motherhood, dedication and many other important subjects, which is probably the main reason this film is loved so much and so high in the IMDb top250. There is a lot lot more than wonderful animation here. I cannot really comment on the voice acting as I, of course, watched this one with subtitles as I don't understand a word Japanese, but I think they are probably doing a solid job as they are all fairly experienced and I never heard that this could be the film's one weakness. I cannot come up with a weakness while watching this. The drama was never over-the-top or unrealistic and even if it was, it could have been somewhat justified with all the fantastic stuff going on. Excellent watch and one of the best animated films of the 2000s. Highly recommended.