Spoilers
Part Alice in Wonderland, part Neverending Story, and part
fairy tale, Miyazaki's Spirited Away is an enchanting and often humorous
animated movie. It tells the story of a young girl named Chihiro who
gets stranded in the spirit world after her parents accidently eat the
food of the spirits and get transformed into large pigs. After finding
help in the mysterious boy named Haku, Chihiro must work in the spirit
world's bath house to hopefully find a way to rescue her parents and
escape back into her world.
Visually, Spirited Away is a joy to behold. Rather than going for the
hyperactive sequences or uniform character designs most animes are known
for, Spirited Away looks like the illustrations of one of the most
imaginative children's books vibrantly come to life. The backgrounds are
incredibly detailed and the animation isn't simplistic or pastel-colored
in the least.
The characters are also wonderfully imaginative. Chihiro grows from a
somber little girl to a happy, caring child. Also populating the world
of the movie is a group of wild and wonderfully wacky characters. Every
child's dreams or nightmares is in this movie in some shape or form. If
you thought Disney's Alice in Wonderland was weird, you haven't seen
anything yet. In fact, this movie is what Alice in Wonderland should've
been like. Also a nice touch is the way that this movie gets across that
even though there many different forces, no one character is truly good
or evil. In fact even the cackling, ugly witch Yubaba, who controls the
bath house, isn't really a scheming, evil monster after all. She even
gets some funny moments.
Story-wise the movie is somewhat off-kilter. Aw heck. Who am I kidding?
This movie is completely off the wall. People who aren't used to just
sitting back and letting things happen may not enjoy this movie at all.
Spirited Away is bizarre with a capital B. Half the time it's not
making very much sense. The other half it seems to be bringing up plot
points that seem to serve no purpose. The ending felt kind of contrived, and
other than a few scattered messages about greed, the movie didn't seem
to be saying anything deep, profound, or emotional to me. But when
things worked, the movie felt like the most sublimely gorgeous dream. And
there's one thing this movie has in spades and it's whimsy. The
settings, the characters, everything combines to create one oddly endearing
experience that both children and adults can enjoy. The movie also has its
own brand of humor. While not the fall-out-of-your-seat, laugh-out-loud
type of humor you seen in most western animated movies, Spirit!
ed Away displays a certain exhuberance and giddiness and an almost
childlike charm that's often huggably cute in many places without being
pandering.
While I'm not a big anime fan, and while this movie may not become one
of my absolute favorites of all time, there is enough about this movie
to ensure that I and many other people will enjoy it again and again.
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