It helps to know your folk and fairy tale motifs...

Rating: Null/10 (21 October 2002)

...but it isn't necessary if you want to just watch it without thinking. **SPOILERS**
While others have called this a riff on "Alice in Wonderland" and "Wizard of Oz" (and it is, it is, it certainly is), it is also a pastiche of every culture's fairy and folk tales.
Examples?: 1) Yubaba: Baba Yaga, anyone? She's the alternately vicious and helpful witch of Russian lore, lives in a house on chicken feet and can be your best friend or worst nightmare depending on what day you catch her. Of course, Yubaba is also reminiscent of The Duchess AND the Red Queen from "Alice". She's the Wicked Witch from Oz. Queen Mab of British legend. And while I am not terribly conversant with Japanese fairy tales, I'm fairly sure there is a wicked witch/evil fairy ruling over Japan's fairy land as well.

2) Guys, you never, but never eat food you find sitting around in a strange place. It will either turn you into a piggie or it will prevent you from leaving the strange place.
3) The three green heads (which all looked a lot like Disney's blue Genie to me) are indeed part of traditional japanese lore. They are headless ghosts and eaters of human flesh.
4) Ditto, no face, The Hungry ghost who can't get his fill.
5) The "prince" (instead of princess) in peril.
6) How about that stink spirit: Androcles and the Lion, anyone?
7) "Don't look back!" (Lot's wife looking back on Sodom and Gomorrah?)
8) The kind hearted, tough as nails character (the boiler man) who helps the heroine when she needs help.
9) The helpful animal companions (okay, so they used to be a baby and a harpy, but still...)
10) The frog. Frogs are often turned into princes and vicer versa, but in much of traditional fairy lore, frogs are NOT good guys...they aren't even guys...they just aren't anyone you want to meet.
11)SPOILER: The fact that Chichiro and folks have been in fairy land a LONG time (maybe not the requisite seven years, but certainly seven weeks or months, judging by the grass that has grown, the fall of leaves and the dust in the car).
All they needed was Tamlyn, a feisty dog and some ruby slippers. Instead, they had a school card, sneakers and a hungry ghost.
I loved this movie. I know a lot of people had plaints about the plot. Yes, there were some breakdowns in logic, but then have you ever read the great English classic "Alice in Wonderland"? That thing has plot holes big enough to drive a mack truck through. Friendships form instantaneously in "The Wizard of Oz." Evil characters (like the flying monkeys in Oz and the Duchess in Wonderland) become good. This was a "fantasy." More to the point, it was a DREAM fantasy. (Okay, yeah, it's "real" in that we are to assume it is happening, but the flavor is dreamlike--it's fairy land for crying out loud.).
No, you can't take very small children or a weak bladder to this film. You need a strong stomach, too. (When the Hungry Ghost lost ITS lunch, I nearly lost mine.) But it wasn't any worse than--and was, frankly, miles ahead of "The Road to El Dorado" and "Hercules" for story and sophistication.

Go see the movie. Let it wash over you. And don't LOOK for logic (or trouble); it's a dream--dreams are never logical.