how did that movie get such a good rating???

Rating: Null/10 (24 October 2011)

I stumbled upon Ponyo a few days ago, and loved it a lot. I had maybe too high expectations for Spirited away after that...
The plot is at best uninteresting. At worst, non existent.
The main character is bland and frankly annoying. Worst she seems to evolve a tiny bit throughout the movie only to go right back to annoying selfish bratty behaviour in the last scene. There goes the idea of the movie being about a rite of passage, or coming of age. She does not learn, evolve or change.
The dragon form of Haku seems to be taken right off the never-ending story. He could make for an interesting character, with a story to tell, he seems to have been through a lot. But towards the end of the movie the only things we learn about him just serve to confuse us more.
Everything else apart from a few humans (and Haku) is ugly/monster like. And behave in a way that is anything from logical. The "no-face" attitude being the best example of that.
There seems to be a theme about not forgetting who you are (the parents change into pigs and forget about who they were before, people forget their names, the "no-face" changes a lot after only a little while in the bathhouse only to change again when he is out of it, the big baby thing also changes when he gets out etc ...) but it is not really followed through.
Apart from Chihiro wanting to ultimately get out of that place and help her parents, the motives of other people there are unexplained. We don't know why the witches act like they do, why people never try to get out, why the spirits act like the big lumps they look like.
I really wished I had liked that movie, but nothing of what went on in it made any sense to me. I did not comprehend or liked any of the characters, or for that matter the whole "world" it took place in.
Feel free to explain it to me, because seeing how high its rating is, I'm really wondering if I've watched the right movie!