Visually stunning. Plot... lacking, to say the least

Rating: 6/10 (1 January 2004)

(Contains spoilers ahead) No one can throw down shots about this movie as far as animation style and artistic vision. The color and fluidity of the scenes are amazing, I'm sure providing a source of inspiration for many young animators and animation directors. But all throughout the film, I could not help but think "for the love of God, pick up the pace". Now, I'm a big fan of the anime style, and I can certainly appreciate good craftsmanship (as is demonstrated in this movie), but the storyline was terrible. I could hardly choke down the hacked up and ripped off Alice in Wonderland plot. Throw in a cheshire cat and some more metaphors of narcotic consumption and you're right back at the old Disney classic. The pace of the movie crawled. Simply crawled. Even during what were supposed to be the most dramatic sequences, I found myself grasping at straws in the consciousness department. The character development was terrible outside of Sen (or Chihiro, whichever you prefer). Her development from a whiny clumsy oaf to a confident clumsy oaf was at least half-way decent. She was the only semi-rounded character in a world of static one dimensional characters. The only character that I found moderately interesting was the Boiler Room Man, Kamaji. His sudden shift from being a surly old (6-armed) man to a caring sort of uncle figure to Sen was a little bit inexplicable, but forgivable. The most ridiculous transition in this film was when No-Face chases Sen through the bathhouse in a seemingly murderous rampage, and then Sen forgets about that within about 90 seconds and invites him onto a train with her! This goes unexplained, and the character of No-Face just suddenly becomes friendly and everyone seems to forget that he ate 3 people, and destroyed large areas of the bathhouse, but who needs a storyline when you can just cover it with pretty colors and nice backgrounds.
All in all, this film left me wondering how on Earth it won so many awards, and why so many people praise this film as a masterpiece. No, I do not speak Japanese, and was therefore forced to watch the English translation (and I realize there is always something lost in the translation of films, or anything for that matter), but I deeply hope that the Japanese version carries more meaning and a sense of continuity. See this movie if you like animation. If for nothing else, see it because then you can know what some of the anime nuts are talking about. Expect great animation, expect some strange creatures, but don't bother trying to string any of the events together in any kind of logical story. Just enjoy the fluidity of the pretty colors, and try to forget that little things like "plot" actually matter.
6/10