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Loading …Rent Movie.com movie reviews presents Spirited Away movie review a 2001 film starring Rumi Hîragi, Miyu Irino and directed by Hayao Miyazaki Spirited Away Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi In the middle of her family’s move to the suburbs, a sullen 10-year-old girl wanders into a world ruled by gods, witches, and monsters; where humans are changed into animals; and a bathhouse for these creatures. Spirited Away Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi Chihiro and her family are on their way to their new house in the suburbs when her father decides to take a shortcut along a lonely-looking dirt road. After getting out of the car and walking along a path for a while, they discover an open-air restaurant filled with food but with no workers or customers present. Mom and Dad don’t hesitate to sit down and dig in, but Chihiro senses danger and refuses. As night falls, she is terrified to see the area fill with faceless spirits, but when she runs to find her parents, she discovers that they have been turned into pigs. She is found by a mysterious boy named Haku, who promises to help her. He gets her a job working in a nearby building, which turns out to be a bathhouse for the thousands of Japan’s gods and spirits. Though the work is hard and the people strange, she does as well as she can. Her parents, however, are still waiting in the hotel’s stockyard, and Chihiro must find a way to break the spell on them before they end up as the main course of some guest’s dinner. Spirited Away Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi The highest grossing film in Japanese box-office history (more than $234 million), Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (Sen To Chihiro Kamikakushi) is a dazzling film that reasserts the power of drawn animation to create fantasy worlds. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Chihiro (voice by Daveigh Chase–Lilo in Disney’s Lilo & Stitch) plunges into an alternate reality. On the way to their new home, the petulant adolescent and her parents find what they think is a deserted amusement park. Her parents stuff themselves until they turn into pigs, and Chihiro discovers they’re trapped in a resort for traditional Japanese gods and spirits. An oddly familiar boy named Haku (Jason Marsden) instructs Chihiro to request a job from Yubaba (Suzanne Pleshette), the greedy witch who rules the spa. As she works, Chihiro’s untapped qualities keep her from being corrupted by the greed that pervades Yubaba’s mini-empire. In a series of fantastic adventures, she purges a river god suffering from human pollution, rescues the mysterious No-Face, and befriends Yubaba’s kindly twin, Zeniba (Pleshette again). The resolve, bravery, and love Chihiro discovers within herself enable her to aid Haku and save her parents. The result is a moving and magical journey, told with consummate skill by one of the masters of contemporary animation. MPAA Rated: PG (”Some scary moments”) –Charles Solomon
Comment by Jonathan Cohen
# January 2, 2007,
“Spirited Away”, the first Japanese anime movie to win both an Oscar and other worldwide awards, is also one of the most unique and beautifully made animated movies you’ll ever see.
The acknowledged masterpiece of Hayao Miyazaki, Japan’s most successful director (animated or live) ever, it’s a novel fantasy about the unusual and spiritual journey of a tiny, shy girl.
Miyazaki, who draws, writes and oversees every single detail of this and his other films, always creates a small but strong girl as his central character. Chihiro, withdrawn and poker-faced, has that role here, as she wanders away from her suburban parents when they discover a lavish buffet in what looks to be an abandoned temple. Within minutes, she’s swept inside by a mysterious, master-type boy named Haku and discovers a wondrous but creepy bathhouse crawling with strange spiritual creatures- a place where humans are not welcome. Inside, she encounters everything from tiny moving ash particles with eyes to
a truly repulsive sludge monster emerging from a dirty tub. Chihiro also has her name stolen by Yubaba, the weird, wacky sorceress who runs the place, and must be known as “Sen” until she meets one test after another, the better to eventually escape and become a girl again. It’s this journey that the movie centers on- not unlike a Japanese take on “Alice In Wonderland”.
But it’s also much more.
Unlike the average American animated feature, “Spirited Away” runs two hours, yet it unfolds like origami. The few human characters are drawn and speak like real, frightened kids, yet with dignity as well. The unusual spirits, resembling everything from mutant kabuki to- of all things- “Looney Tunes”‘ Michigan J. Frog, usually don’t speak yet say as much, if not more, as those gabby scare-factory things from “Monsters Inc.” Miyazaki doesn’t believe in drowning the screen- or the audience- in rat-a-tat dialogue; instead, he draws simple, family-minded morals in a most appealing, visually stunning way. He also has a gifted composer-conductor, Joe Hisaishi, who backs the movie with both his own meditative piano solos and some exotic, Martin Denny-
style orchestration. The visual, character, and musical elements all meld into an atmosphere that’s both simple and sophisticated,
uniquely Japanese yet welcoming to all.
For this American release, Disney took special care to keep the entire movie untouched yet create an English soundtrack that fit in perfectly- not an easy thing to do when dubbing over Japanese-speaking mouths. Two bonus features show this process quite well, a tribute to the fine work of both the couple who translated the Miyazaki script into clear English and the gifted voice cast. The best of the latter are Daveigh Chase (from “Lilo and Stitch”), the youngster who captures Chihiro with the heartfelt shyness she was drawn with, and Suzanne Pleshette, who gave Yubaba- and her “good witch” sister- a charming, gravelly cackle that does Margaret Hamilton proud.
There’s also a documentary from Nippon TV (in Japanese with subtitles) that follows Miyazaki- an avuncular, chain-smoking patriarch- and his team of animators, sound men, musicians and actors as they create “Spirited Away” from the director’s original sketchbook to the screen. Even with no English, the process at Ghibli is as fascinating as the movie itself- old-school, hand-drawn animation all the way with a distinct flavor, a wonderful craft in this computer-driven age.
If, like me, you’re a serious animation buff, or if you’re younger and like classic Disney or “Harry Potter” but aren’t sure about anime, or even if you like “Lord of the Rings” but won’t go near a “cartoon”, you’ll really like “Spirited Away”- truly a product of the magical mind of Miyazaki.