IGN
A huge accomplishment in the world of traditional animation and a powerful rebuttal to the notion that films for children must be simplistic and visually dull.
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Spirited Away
From the legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke), this Academy Award winner (Best Animated Film) follows the fanciful adventures of a ten-year-old girl named Chihiro.
Best Animated Feature, Academy Awards 2003.
2001Rating: PG125 minsJapanStudio Ghibli
AdventureAnimatedKids & FamilyFantasy
- Director:
- Hayao Miyazaki ('Princess Mononoke')
- Writer:
- Hayao Miyazaki
- Cast:
- Daveigh ChaseSuzanne PleshetteJason MarsdenSusan EganDavid Ogden Stiers
Spirited Away / Reviews
The Guardian
A beautifully drawn and wonderfully composed work of art - really, no other description will do - which takes us on a rocket-fuelled flight of fancy.
Full reviewA.V. Club
Miyazaki's luminescent, gorgeously realised world is relatively safe for children, but it also acknowledges blood, pain, dread, and death in ways that other animated films wouldn't dare.
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Rolling Stone
Think you're too hip for a Japanese anime about a lost ten-year-old girl whose parents turn into snorting pigs? Get over it.
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Salon
Spirited Away is a trip, in the literal, metaphorical and indeed lysergic senses of that word.
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The Globe and Mail
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...
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New York Post
Spirited Away... is such a landmark in animation that labelling it a masterpiece almost seems inadequate.
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TV Guide
Creating a rare story-world that follows a consistent logic yet allows for most anything to happen, Miyazaki again proves himself to be more genii than filmmaker.
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The Washington Post
A cultural wildcard experience: wacky, different, unusual, even nutty. Don't say I didn't encourage and warn you.
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Slant Magazine
Plot here takes a backseat to set pieces that flow into each other like a glorious stream of consciousness.
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Variety
An out-and-out charmer. It's almost impossible to do justice in words either to the visual richness of the movie, which melanges traditional Japanese clothes and architecture with both Victorian and modern-day artifacts, or to the character-filled storyline, with human figures, harpies and grotesque creatures.
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The New York Times
The towering, lost dreaminess at the heart of the film is an unmistakable obsession of this director.
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Hollywood Reporter
Spirited dazzles and entertains like no other movie this year. It also comes to a satisfying conclusion and never once seems to take shortcuts. Miyazaki is one of world cinema's most wondrously gifted artists and storytellers.
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Empire Magazine
The fact that Miyazaki and his team hand-draw the images before they're digitally coloured and animated gives them an artistry that has been woefully lacking from so many recent American features.
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