4 stars (out of 4)

Rating: 9/10 (11 January 2003)

Chihiro is a little girl. She and her parents are driving to their new house in the suburbs to meet the movers, but they take a wrong turn and end up at the entrance to what looks like it might be an abandoned amusement park. She doesn't want to go in, but her parents insist. Things don't go smoothly, and soon Chihiro is on her own, exploring what looks like an enormous bathhouse.
But this is no ordinary bathhouse. Soon Chihiro discovers that it is populated by many spirits, mostly in the form of creatures the likes of which she (and the audience) has never seen before. I'd love to tell you about some of them, but I don't want to spoil the wonderful surprises. Okay, I will mention the soot creatures, who look like little black Koosh balls with eyes and whose job it is to carry coal for the boiler.
I went into this film on 11/22/2002 with very high expectations, since it has gotten universally good reviews. Usually high expectations are a bad thing, and in fact during the very early parts of the film I wasn't convinced. The green line running down the middle of the screen for maybe 10 minutes didn't help either. But once the story entered the spirit world, the film became simply *magical*. I was just watching to see what wonderful thing Hayao Miyazaki (the writer/director of this film and also "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Princess Mononoke") would come up with next.
The animation is sometimes startlingly realistic and other times not at all, and the combination works wonderfully. About the only negative thing I can think to say is that the film seemed like it might have been a touch long, although I couldn't even begin to suggest anything to cut. I understand that this film is being distributed in subtitled form in addition to the dubbed version I saw, although for non-Japanese speakers the dubbed version is probably a better choice for the first viewing. Hopefully the eventual DVD will offer both options.
The United States doesn't consider animated films to be appropriate for anyone but children, but that's just wrong. This film passed "Titanic" to be Japan's number one grossing film *of all time*. It absolutely deserves consideration for the Best Picture Oscar, and if it does not get at least a nomination for best animated film, something is very wrong.
See this film!