Princess Mononoke (US reviews - page 2)

LA Weekly

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October 29, 1999, Friday

Animating the Century Princess Mononoke taps the Zeitgeist

By Ernest Hardy

[...]

The movie, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and recast by Miramax with Hollywood celebrity voices, spins on questions of moral culpability and spirituality, on layered musings about the connectedness of all living things and the responsibilities that those relationships demand. The film's strength lies in its refusal to paint either its arguments or its characters in black and white: There are no pure heroes, no clear-cut villains and no pat answers.

[...]

Miyazaki folds a host of timely, hot-button issues into his tale: the plight of indigenous people and nature in the face of unchecked business interests, the death of spirituality in the name of social progress, misogyny in its many manifestations. Princess Mononoke is a Zeitgeist potpourri, strung with late-20th-century fear and anxiety.

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Metromix (The Chicago Tribune)

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October 29, 1999, Friday

'Princess Mononoke' 'Princess Mononoke' has lush animation, unique vision

By Mark Caro

[...]

But the triumph lies in the whole more than the parts; Japanese anime veteran Hayao Miyazaki has created a world simply unlike any you've seen, a lush, ancient forestland where man and nature struggle amid terrifying beasts, noble creatures and spritely forest spirits. As you watch the carefully executed English-language version of this 1997 Japanese film sensation, you're always aware that you're experiencing one man's unique vision rather than a lavish cartoon assembled by committee to please anyone 5 years old and up.

[...]

The battling among the various factions becomes complicated, and the action occasionally bogs down over the movie's 2 1/4-hour length. Yet rarely does any film, animated or otherwise, immerse you in such a vivid landscape and engage your senses so strongly. The climax is truly spectacular and scary, and though the human characters look like they escaped from "Speed Racer," their emotional resolutions have the kind of nuance you'd expect from a Kurosawa film.

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Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, Illinois)

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October 29, 1999, Friday

'Princess' an enthralling tale of man vs. nature

By Dann Gire

[...]

It also has the distinction of being a magnificent Japanese animated feature, one that has been surprisingly well adapted to Western audiences unfamiliar with the conventions and histories of Japanese stories. (Some of the scenes of an iron-mining town were inspired by the director's love of John Ford Westerns.)

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Even though this sounds like a typical good vs. evil plot, "Princess Mononoke" never takes a black-and-white attitude toward its characters or their situations.

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The Toronto Star

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October 29, 1999, Friday

Animated feature a bit dark for kids

By Peter Howell

Princess Mononoke arrives in theatres today as both a celebration and an experiment.

A landmark of the lush Japanese animation art known as animé, the film triumphed in its homeland when it was released in 1997. It broke $150 million at Japan's box office (the only film besides Titanic ever to do so) and won the country's equivalent of the Oscar for best picture.

Its creator, animation icon Hayao Miyazaki, is revered in Japan the way Disney is revered in North America. He has often been compared, understandably, to legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa for his use of samurai themes and epic battle scenes. Miyazaki's images are painterly and fantastic: the shape- shifting Nightwalker spirit creature of Princess Mononoke is like a cubist Picasso painting set in motion.

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Reel.com

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October 1999

Princess Mononoke

By Marc Fortier

Those unacquainted with Japan's vast palette of animated filmmaking will have a rare opportunity to see one of its masterworks on the big screen with Disney's release (by way of art-house subsidiary Miramax)of anime auteur Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke. Following the studio's controversial announcement to "Americanize" the anime masterpiece with English dubbing and script changes, the big "D" has surprisingly made good, acquiring some of the West's biggest talents to produce one of the most skillful translations of a foreign film yet. The result, while not a substitute for the original, will still astound audiences with its mesmerizing vision.

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New York Daily News

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October 29, 1999, Friday

This Dark 'Princess' Isn't for Kids To Disney fans, Japanese anime feature may seem anemic; it's also gory

By Jack Mathews

Hayao Miyazaki, the acknowledged master of the Japanese school of animation known as anime, is on record as saying that his epic "Princess Mononoke" — the second-most-popular movie ever released in Japan, behind "Titanic" — should not be viewed by anyone under the age of 10.

Ignore his advice at your children's risk.

"Princess Mononoke," redubbed with English-speaking actors for its U.S. release, boasts many elements of classic animated fantasy — gorgeous drawings, fast action, inventive creatures, a courageous hero, a beautiful, a defiant princess, an ethereal spirit and a monster who'd send Godzilla screaming into the night.

But the plot is far too dense, the violence far too gory and the underlying theme — humanity's abusive relationship with nature — far too sophisticated for small kids. Add a marathon running time of 2 hours and 13 minutes, and you're beyond the range of all but the most devoted adolescent and young-adult fans of anime.

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MSNBC.com

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October 28, 1999, Thursday

A rich and rewarding cartoon fable ‘Princess Mononoke’ has grand sweep of romantic epic, ecological theme

By Leonard Klady (Reuters)

Japan’s all-time box office champ, "Princess Mononoke," is a rich cartoon fable of bygone gods locking horns with man and with industry, which threatens to unbalance the forces of nature. Though set in the 14th century, its ecological bias and feminist slant provide a modern resonance. But the picture — steeped in Asian folklore — will require shrewd translation to connect with Western audiences.

FLYING IN THE face of popular Western animation, "Princess Mononoke" is not a musical, nor is it primarily directed at preteens, even if that group can readily embrace it. This "animé" film, as its format is called, represents a bold experiment for director Hayao Miyazaki, whose earlier work, including "Kiki’s Delivery Service," "The Red Pig" and "My Neighbor Totoro," had more gentle, youthful themes.

"Princess Mononoke" which has grossed more than $150 million in Japan, is not only more sharply drawn, it has an extremely complex and adult script.

[...]

MSNBC.com

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October 28, 1999, Thursday

Gorgeously made ‘Mononoke’ casts an uneven spell Violent ‘animé’ format has vivid grace and nobility, but narrative style is repetitious

By Bob Campbell (Newhouse News Service)

On its 1997 Japanese release, the animated "Princess Moonlike" pulverized all national box-office records. The two-year lead-up to its opening in the United States reflects Miramax’s painstaking effort to reframe this rapturous and violent fairy tale for Americans unfamiliar with the "animé" form.

THE KEY DECISION was not to cut its 132 minutes either for pace or a kid-friendly rating. In Japan, animation constitutes a parallel film industry with its own genres. Much animé isn’t aimed at children, and some is strictly adult.

Epitomizing the myth-legend subspecies of animé called "sadi-wadi," Hayao Miyazaki’s hand-woven screen tapestry hardly compares in violence with 1989’s ultraviolet "Overfeed" duo or 1996’s sexed-up "Perfect Blue." But its swirl of human, animal and demonic vividness explains the PG-13 tag.

The saga of a questing 14th-century prince and a forest princess who literally runs with the wolves, "Princess Moonlike" is graced with images of charm and phenomenal beauty. An anti-violence theme, however, registers less vividly than spectacular battle scenes and incidental beheadings.

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The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

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October 29, 1999, Friday

Japan's animated eco-fable is not a trip to Disneyland Beneath the kitschy grandeur lies a true work of art

By Liam Lacey

When a giant, talking boar god, covered with writhing worms, goes insane, destroys a forest and attacks a Japanese feudal village, the people know something is amiss. And the audience for Princess Mononoke knows from the opening frame that they're not in Disneyland any more. There are no cute sidekick animals, adolescent songs, or a chorus of fluttering bluebirds.

Japan's second-biggest-grossing film of all time (before Titanic, its $160-million box office was a record) is built on a scale so ambitious it makes North American animated features seem puny. The story -- of a young man who must fight huge beast demons, save himself from a horrible curse and make peace between a warrior queen and the spirit of the forest -- is complex and filled with multiplying digressions. The imagery, ranging from sublime mountain-smashing power to firefly delicacy (individual waterdrops splashing on a rock) is exuberant and intoxicating.

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New Times Los Angeles

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October 28, 1999, Thursday

Of Gods and Demons An agile teen battles the forces of evil in the surprisingly stodgy Princess Mononoke

By Andy Klein

Much like the religion that has swirled around the Star Wars trilogy for twentysome years, the fanaticism evidenced among American fans of Japanese anime remains a mystery to some of us. Writer-director Hayao Miyazaki's megahit Princess Mononoke does very little to cast light on this obsession: More's the pity, since Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro, Miyazaki's wildly loopy 1988 James Bond/Fantomas clone, was one of the best anime features to be imported to the U.S. theatrically.

[...]

Yet, while Mononoke is often gorgeous to look at and has a far more sophisticated story than most Japanese animated features, it still feels overlong and dramatically unengaging, at least in its American incarnation. (Some of this may be the fault of the English-language casting and direction.) Miyazaki sold the American rights only on the condition that the film not be cut. While in principle this demand deserves our support -- and Miramax deserves credit for agreeing to it -- the film, let us point out, is more than two-and-a-quarter-hours long.

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Variety

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October 29, 1999, Friday

Princess Mononoke (English Version)

By Todd McCarthy

After striking out in its attempt to foist an English- dubbed version of "Life Is Beautiful" on the American public, Miramax will find a friendlier welcome for its re-voiced "Princess Mononoke." Hayao Miyazaki's exceedingly imaginative, beautifully realized animated epic adventure has been adapted into English with tact and talent, which at least makes the film theoretically accessible to U.S. audiences in a way that it never would have been in its original Japanese.

Nevertheless, it will take all of Miramax's legendary marketing prowess to secure sure footing anywhere beyond the specialized circuit, as the PG-13 film, while mainstream in its appeal, is too violent and, at 133 minutes, too long for small fry, and departs from the anthropomorphic and musical Disney conventions in so many creative, exciting ways.

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Entertainment Weekly

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October 29, 1999, Friday

PRINCESS MONONOKE

By Ty Burr

There's a hard, hard beauty to animation master Hayao Miyazaki's hugely ambitious (and in Japan, hugely successful) epic. Princess Mononoke is about, no less, the passing of mankind from pagan beliefs into a complex, ruinous modernity. You don't need to be a scholar of feudal Japan to dig this, though: The characters are straight out of the Joseph Campbell playbook, from questing hero Ashitaka (the voice of Billy Crudup) to feral princess San (Claire Danes) to trickster monk Jigo (Billy Bob Thornton) to calculating Lady Eboshi (Minnie Driver). And the vast landscape through which they journey -- of clashing battles, giant animal gods, and all-powerful forest spirits -- is a fitting stage for archetypes.

This is unquestionably not one for the kiddies --but you'll know that in the first five minutes, when the worm-eaten boar demon crashes out of the forest. Anyone else with a taste for sheer wonder (and a willingness to overlook flat line readings from the miscast Danes and Thornton) will be in heaven. A windswept pinnacle of its art, Princess Mononoke has the effect of making the average Disney film look like just another toy story. Grade: A

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E! Online

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October 1999

Princess Mononoke

(Author unknown)

Myth, history and magic take shape in this epic morality fable from amazing animator Miyazaki. This action-packed fairy tale tells of gods, demons and humans struggling for control of a paradise-like forest (no, this isn't about Hollywood). Mortally poisoned by a demonically possessed wild boar (trust us, okay?), a young prince (Crudup) is forced to leave his village. On his journey he meets a selfish upper-class industrialist (Driver) and some of the spirits who guard the forest, which include a giant she-wolf (Anderson) and the fiery Princess Mononoke (Danes). And she isn't any little mermaid. This fanciful, violent world is filled with the kind of resonant images that usually only come to us in our dreams. Not to be missed.

Slate

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October 29, 1999, Friday

Machines in the Garden The sublimely animated Princess Mononoke culminates in a powerful vision of ecological apocalypse

By David Edelstein

In the animated ecological epic Princess Mononoke, the camera travels over landscapes with a clear, steady gaze, like a Zen hang glider. The images have none of the comin'-at-ya pop-surrealism of American cartoons, many of which have characters that spring out of the frame like jack- in-the-boxes. The Japanese director, Hayao Miyazaki, who spent three years on Princess Mononoke and is reported to have done 70 percent of its paintings himself, seems to work from the outside in: to begin with the curve of the earth, then the mossy hills, the watercolor foliage, the nubby stones, the whorls on the wood, the meticulous carvings on a teacup. He captures the texture of light and the currents of air. You could almost settle down in this landscape. A view of nature that some would call "tree-hugging" doesn't feel softheaded when the trees are rendered in such brilliant and robust detail.

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New York Post

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October 1999

A VERY PRETTY 'TOON

By Jonathan Foreman

WITH the exception of "Titanic," Hayao Miyazakai's epic "Princess Mononoke" is Japan's highest grossing film ever, and for good reason.

It's the "Star Wars" of animated features, a haunting, beautiful film that holds your attention despite its length and its complex plot, which is rooted in Japanese folk tales and animist mythology.

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Time Out New York

The following are representative quotes only.

October 28, 1999, Thursday

Princess Mononoke

By Andrew Johnston

Princess Mononoke was the biggest homegrown hit--animated or otherwise--in the history of Japanese cinema, and it's not hard to see why: It combines the epic sweep of Kurosawa's samurai movies, the shameless melodrama of PlayStation game plots and the pure weirdness of cultural phenomena such as Iron Chef and Pokemon. Yet the same factors that led Japanese audiences to embrace legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki's most ambitious project to date could well leave Americans scratching their heads. As baffling as Mononoke sometimes is, though, it's undeniably one of the most extravagantly beautiful animated films ever made.

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CrankyCritic.com

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October 31, 1999, Sunday

Cranky Critic Movie Reviews: Princess Mononoke

By Chuck Schwartz

IN SHORT: A fantastic, breathtaking animated epic. Not for single digit kidlets.

I've written many times before about the eventual coming of an animated film for grownups. Word of mouth among other 'toonheads indicated that it might come from Japan, a 1997 creation of Hayao Miyazaki called The Princess Mononoke. Disney/Miramax went to great efforts to keep copies of Mononoke away from the American market but, if you knew where to look (as I did), you could get your hands on a subtitled copy. Which I did. Even with complicated and unfamiliar character names, the Japanese Mononoke was epic in scope, a magnificently animated, complicated story heavily infused with Japanese fantasy, mysticism, culture and legend. I know that for a fact because I couldn't understand the culmination of the flick. Miyazaki's distribution deal allowed no editing of any of his flicks, which meant that whoever adapted the film might have a devil of a time translating Eastern myth into Western story.

That man would be Neil Gaiman, a fantasy writer of the printed page, the television screen, and more to the point, renowned for his creation of The Sandman for DC Comics, a transcendant work which proved that the term "graphic novel" was not an oxymoron. Anyone familiar with Gaiman's work knows that Miramax's choice, based on a recommendation by Quentin Tarantino, was perfect. Virtually all the symbolic content that confounded me in subtitles was clear as a bell in the English dub [and making that cultural translation was the first thing Gaiman and I talked about when he sat for CrankyCritic StarTalk].

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Fandom

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October 29, 1999, Friday

PRINCESS MONONOKE: The New Standard in Animation Review: Miyazaki`s masterpiece reaches American, intact!

By Steve Biodrowski

[...]

One of the most consistently entertaining auteurs working in Japanimation is Hayao Miyazaki (LUPIN III: THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO, LAPUTA: CASTLE IN THE SKY). While much of anime’s notoriety in this country is based on the more outrageous, adult aspects (including X-rated sex and violence) Miyazaki’s work has always been closer (in a relative sense, anyway) to the Disney aesthetic. (In fact, Buena Vista Home Video has been releasing many of the director’s older works on tape, including KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE). Not that Miyazaki ever directed animated musicals aimed at children, but there is a pastoral beauty to his films that has a somewhat familiar feel comfortable to Western audiences. Nevertheless, his work always struck a PG tone, with action and adventure that would appeal to teens and young adults, as well as to older audiences impressed with the artistry.

With PRINCESS MONONOKE, his first film to receive substantial theatrical distribution in America, Miyazaki steps up to a whole new level of achievement. The beauty and adventure of his previous works remain intact, but gone is the light-hearted humor of KIKI and MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, replaced by an epic tone that reaches mythic proportions. [...]

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The Boston Phoenix

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October 28, 1999, Thursday

Princess Mononoke

By Peg Aloi

This myth of chivalry and environmental activism set in medieval Japan rises above the typical anime fare seen in the US. Acclaimed animator Hayao Miyazaki's heart-stopping art direction helped his film break box-office records in Japan -- it's second only to Titanic.

[...] Its setting reminiscent of C.S. Lewis's Narnia or Tolkien's Middle Earth, Princess Mononoke resonates with quiet truths rarely channeled by Hollywood.

Rolling Stone

The following are relevant quotes only.

November 11, 1999, Thursday

Boos & Bravos [short reviews] By Peter Travers

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PRINCESS MONONOKE is not your father's cartoon fun. Every Disney doodler will tell you that Hayao Miyazaki is the man when its [sic] comes to Japanese anime. And this work of extravagant beauty and savage grace, dubbed in English by the likes of Claire Daines, Minnie Driver and Billy Crudup, shows why Miyazaki is so influential. Scenes of humans doing battle with forest creatures -- the princess runs with the wolves who raised her -- go beyond anything you've seen in animation. Just sit back and behold.

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