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
- Director:
- Hayao Miyazaki ('Princess Mononoke')
- Writer:
- Hayao Miyazaki
- Cast:
- Daveigh ChaseSuzanne PleshetteJason MarsdenSusan EganDavid Ogden Stiers
Spirited Away | Awards
Best Animated Feature, Academy Awards 2003.
Spirited Away | Reviews
97%194 reviewsRotten Tomatoes® Score
All reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
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.
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A.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.
Full reviewSpirited Away | Release Details
Spirited Away is available to stream in New Zealand now on Netflix and Google Play and Apple TV.