Spirited Away

**1/2 – In general, I don’t do ‘whimsy’. I have found that pretty much every attempt a film makes at achieving that quality ends in a miserable failure resulting in a horrifying nightmarish ordeal filled with creepy creatures and bizarre situations. “Spirited Away” – a critically acclaimed 2001 Japanese animated film – is the absolute epitome of the above-mentioned failed whimsy, and provides more nightmare fuel per minute than any given freaky European circus or freaky European puppet show. I must admit that there is a great degree of creativity and imagination shown here (or at least a lot of evidence of psychotropic drug use) in the forms of fantastical creatures and landscapes, but the whole deal has the confusing, frustrating and disorienting elements of a fever dream. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever watched any Japanimation that hasn’t had that quality. So I’m going to go ahead and rack that up to the wacky culture of the Japanese and their inability to translate it into something that a normal human would find enjoyable. It’s either that or a large quantity of drugs, and the Japanese are not known as big time users, as far as I am aware. In any event, getting back to the film at hand, I found it pretty dull, extremely odd and lacking in depth. It looked pretty nice, but that can only get a film so far in my book.