Spirited Enough

Rating: 7/10 (7 April 2003)

This movie was not the "end all and be all" of Anime movies that
all the hype (and the Oscar win) has boosted it to be, but good
none-the-less. It's an imaginative story and a nice change of pace
from the largely Disney-style narratives and animation that the
majority of North American audiences have become so familiar
with.
I have never been a fan of Anime, based solely on what I consider
to be sub-standard animation and over-stylization (dime-sized
mouths & saucer-sized eyes?!?!), and again those factors did play
a part in my rating SPIRITED AWAY lower than I could have. On
one hand, there is a wealth of interesting looking characters,
absolutely fantastic backgrounds, and incredible attention payed to
animating the 'spirit world' in the movie (including some
breathtaking CGI combinations), but then the actual character
animation itself is rendered in obvious 12-frame rather than 24- frame motion. That just makes no sense to me. It's comparable
to setting a sumptuous table for a regal dinner party, then cracking
open a can of pork and beans and slopping it out onto the good
china.
The shining achievements in SPIRITED AWAY are the characterizations and, above all, the story. The young heroine
Chihiro/Sen is played with exceptional realism in attitudes and
abilities to a ten or eleven year girl; in the way she talks, feels,
moves and reacts one gets the feeling that she is indeed the
daughter, grand-daughter, young sister, neighbour, school chum
that they might know and love. And the film is littered with a
plethora of memorable characters that fascinate and help carry the
story along. Where the movie really shows its MAGIC is in the
wonderful and incredibly imaginative story though. Strange
creatures and magical beings, living in a world so removed from
the typical Hollywood/Disney attempts at "wacky & weird". The
makers of SPIRITED AWAY didn't try to dumb-it-down or pander to
delicacies of the PC crowd (as evidenced by the sight of blood and
vomit and a "Stink-Monster" that was quite obviously a giant,
walking mound of feces!). Nor did you have to sit through a
cookie-cutter love-story cemented together with 10 songs by Elton
John or Celine Dion that ends with a horrible but justifiable villain- death and everyone else living "happily ever after" together forever,
etc....
I laughed a few times, marveled at some of the creativity, and
noticed that it held the attention of both younger and older viewers
alike throughout its unfolding on the screen. I wouldn't knock it, but
I didn't fall in love with it either. It was just "good".
7/10. A nice effort and a good change of animated fare.