I think I remember when I first watched this I said something about how overjoyed I was when I realised it would be seen by children… usually children’s movies are so simple, or striving so much to be entertaining and funny instead of enlightening. This movie is entertaining and funny, it has all the hallmarks of a children’s movie, but at the same time it serves as the most complete life lesson ever seen in animated, or possibly all, cinema. Basically it is the story of a girl who is thrown into a world where she doesn’t want to be (ain’t that all of us?), she is forced to obey the rules of the world as soon as she arrives in order to survive – if she doesn’t eat food from the world, she will literally disappear (ain’t that all of us?) and then she is forced to get a job she’s not going to like in order to prevent herself being turned into a pig like her parents (and ain’t that all of us?). Miyazaki is amazing at making the mundane fantastic.

I’ve seen the Japanese original version and something has to be said for this movie being seen in the original language – the whole philosophy just seems to fit the language, and I’ve heard that the subtitles are more accurate translations than the dub. But the English dub is definitely as good as I’d heard it was – especially Susan Egan, who is really so good it seems the role was originally written for her, it even practically looks like her. This is either talent or a freakish coincidence, I’ll take the former

Joe Hisaishi is an amazing composer, and his score here completely lifts everything, especially the Big Moment with Chihiro on the dragon’s back at the end, absolute beauty.

Tags: Alice, animation, cuties, fantasy, Japanese, Oscar

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 16th, 2004 at 12:47 am and is filed under 5 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.