I had never seen Spirited Away, being neither a fan of Japanese animation, nor whimsy. Who needs whimsy? Not me!
TheBloke (TM) had discovered that one of the Top 100 Movies – Spirited Away – was now available on Netflix. So, kids at school, popcorn prepared, we sat down to watch it.
It started promisingly. A young girl is cross that her family is moving house. They stop at an abandoned theme park to investigate. Believe it or not (you won’t believe it, but it’s true), abandoned theme parks are in my top ten awesome things of all time. I bloody love an abandoned theme park. As a child, I played the dark and disturbing Theme Park Mystery ad infinitum, and – a decade or so ago – the local theme park of my childhood – The American Adventure, closed down, and I definitely spent too long looking at YouTube videos of grass-grown rollercoasters.
Unfortunately, the rest of the movie focused less on the abandoned theme park aspect, and a whole lot more on… I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like Alice in Wonderland met The Wizard of Oz, and they all took a shitload of acid.
Here are some things that happened. Very honestly I fell asleep for about 15 minutes of it, but I did not dream any of this, because my dreams are 100% more pedestrian than anything that happened in this psychotic film.
- A talking radish gets into a lift.
- A character called No-Face throws gold at people
- The emetic dumpling. Which would be a terrible name for a restaurant.
- Identical twin sister witches who can float. One of them has a giant baby. Who also turns into a fat hamster at one point.
- The girl’s love interest turns out to be a river. A standard girl-meets-river romance.
I mean really, it was an absolute crock of shite. Do not recommend.
1/5 Unless you’re on acid, in which case it’s probably amazing.
