A waste of time, unless you are a pre-teen

Rating: 1/10 (4 May 2004)

Quite frankly, I'm tired of people clamoring about this film. As much fun pre-teen girl movies are, this one is not much different from the vast majority of simple kid films with no character development. Liking Miyazaki right now is so sheik, I bet half of the people who've voted for this film haven't even seen it.
Story of spoiled girl, whose parents are bad role models, who gets caught in some pretentious version of a spirit world, goes from being incredibly scared, to really stupid, to unusually headstrong, then right back to being stupid again. Miyazaki should really ask for some help with character development and film tone from some of his fellow screenwriters at Ghibli.
Quite frankly, everybody who sees these film should ask themselves this: Why did I waste the braincells?