Rich backgrounds but jerky animation

Rating: Null/10 (14 July 2003)

Roger Ebert gave `Spirited Away' four stars while most of the IMDb reviewers seem to dislike it. The DVD of the film contains adulatory, worshipful introductions by Disney animators who speak only in superlatives. My family stumbled on Miyazaki's work when I came across a copy of `Kiki's Delivery Service' in the video store and brought it home for my seven-year-old daughter. She enjoyed the story while I was amazed by the richness of the images. It seemed to take place in some imaginary European town of no particular provenance. `Spirited Away' is clearly set in Japan although, true to Japanese animation traditions, none of the characters looks typically Asian. The animation and imagery are dazzling. The story was very dreamlike, actually too dreamlike. What we noticed was that not only could my daughter not understand the plot, neither could I! The characters and relationships were often extremely confusing. And it seems odd that Miyazaki is held in such reverence by the Disney animators when in fact the animation is actually noticeably jerky, not fluid and natural in the way that is the pride of the Disney studios (`Peter Pan' and `Bambi' are good examples). Miyazaki seems to lavish most of his attention on the backgrounds and use reduced animation sequences for his characters, as in cheap American cartoons. Is this cultural, something to do with Japanese artistic or balletic traditions, or is it a matter of cost?