Spirited Away Reviews
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Think you're too hip for Japanese anime about a lost ten-year-old girl whose parents turn into snorting pigs? Get over it.
| Original Score: 4/4
Initially seems like a Through the Looking-Glass fantasy, but rapidly picks up a resonance, weight and complexity that make it all but Shakespearean.
Miyazaki's nonstop images are so stunning, and his imagination so vivid, that the only possible complaint you could have about Spirited Away is that there is no rest period, no timeout.
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| Original Score: A
In scene after scene, Spirited Away unleashes so much wonder and visual imagination that you end up watching the movie in a state of rapturous, awestruck bliss.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Visually imaginative, thematically instructive and thoroughly delightful, it takes us on a roller-coaster ride from innocence to experience without even a hint of that typical kiddie-flick sentimentality.
| Original Score: 5/5
[Spirited Away is] the most deeply and mysteriously satisfying animated feature to come along in ages.
Packed with strange beings amid painterly settings, Spirited Away delivers one of the most colorful fantasy worlds since the similarly surreal Yellow Submarine.
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| Original Score: A-
Children may not understand everything that happens -- I'm not sure even Miyazaki himself does -- but they will almost certainly be fascinated, and undoubtedly delighted.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Miyazaki floods the screen with beautiful scenes and enough fascinating creatures to put Pokemon to shame.
| Original Score: A-
...brilliant in its imagery and astonishing in its creativity. Many films are billed as voyages into fantasy, but this one actually delivers.
That rare movie that has the emotional and psychological depth to match its stunning surface.
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| Original Score: A-
Spirited Away is a trip, in the literal, metaphorical and indeed lysergic senses of that word.
Steeped in lore and unabashedly surreal, the film is just charming enough for children and just bizarre enough for adults -- a perfect balance.
| Original Score: 4/4
Miyazaki is one of world cinema's most wondrously gifted artists and storytellers.
Has few rivals as a work of visual imagination.
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| Original Score: 63/100
Miyazaki has provided another triumph, and, in the midst of the quality fall-off of Disney's in-house animated projects, a reason for animation-lovers to rejoice.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
A cultural wildcard experience: wacky, different, unusual, even nutty.
Like old myths and wonder tales spun afresh.
Even though Disney released this film, Spirited Away points up just how by-the-numbers the studio's fare can be.
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| Original Score: 4/4
Spirited Away is every bit as captivating for its sheer graphic power as it is for its message of go-get-'em-girl power.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Miyazaki, the master animator and director of the enchanting Kiki's Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke, leads us through the looking glass as never before in Spirited Away.
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| Original Score: 4/4
Spirited Away delivers chunks of Yellow Submarine and The Phantom Tollbooth -- a vividly timeless oddity suitable for many children and most stoners.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Hayao Miyazaki's breathtakingly beautiful and poetic Spirited Away -- a Japanese cross between Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz -- is such a landmark in animation that labeling it a masterpiece almost seems inadequate.
| Original Score: 4/4
Spirited Away has the quality of a dream: It takes you places so foreign and fantastic you have no option but to yield completely to it and be spirited along.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
The magic (and original running time) of ace Japanimator Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away survives intact in BV's re-voiced version.
The film is not recommended for toddlers and easily frightened little tykes. But for everyone else, kid or grown-up, this thrilling foray into magical realms is a must.
| Original Score: 4/4
A haunting and indelible fable that warms the chilly soul of Japanese anime and points the way for its American sponsor.
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| Original Score: 4/4
A marriage between the power of Mononoke and the lively pop-pop-pop of his film My Friend Totoro.
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| Original Score: 4/5
If you're dispirited by look-alike, sound-alike, think-alike movies, disturbed by an art form that seems not only to tolerate, but also to reward a paucity of imagination, you're not going to believe your luck.
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| Original Score: 4/5
A movie full of bewitching images and timeless fun and beauty.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
A triumph of psychological depth and artistic brilliance.
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| Original Score: A
