It's actually not over-rated.

Rating: 8/10 (24 April 2019)

One of its writer's better movies if just for the onslaught of bizarre and vivid images that are thrown upon us. It really is quite spectacular and even terrifying at times.
Although Chihiro is not a great character, instantly going from brat to scared little girl never to return in a matter of seconds, you really have a powerful sense of being trapped in a strange and exotic land that only grudgingly has a place for you.
The plot is fairly engaging as we try to get home and struggle with a few episodes at the bathhouse.
Worth a couple of viewings as we explore some interesting ideas on the nature of identity and culture being lost in industrial modernity, we get an ethnically rich and frequently grotesque hybrid of cultural flavour and the monstrosity of big business with only a modicum of the sanctimoniousness that is Hayao's signature.
Sweet, funny and again with a score that will be your new guilty pleasure, this may not be Ghibli's (or even Hayao's) best movie, but it's place in those top 100 lists is more of less earned even if as usual it is as a feat of spectacle and imagination, not so much of story telling.
On that note we are one climax away from a great movie. The thing just...stops. But it's the journey not the destination. I feel this could have made a very dignified movie for all ages but seems to have been intentionally "kidified". Something Frozen thankfully didn't do.
Great feature for a new year's eve in with an oriental buffet on your lap and good company.
Both English and original versions are equally good.