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Quotes from what other press are saying about Princess Mononoke:
(last updated November 15, 1999)

Hank Leukart of The Dartmouth (Dartmouth College) -

"In a strange turn of events, a Japanese anime movie [Princess Mononoke] has been released in mainstream venues in the United States by Miramax — and in an even stranger turn of events, critics have been raving about this animated environmentalist epic...Unfortunately, while the out-of-this-world feeling the film conveys helps to add intricacy, the ambiguity and artificiality of the tale results in a product inferior to other anime films and even this year's animated adventures..."

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times - " … Hayao Miyazaki is a great animator, and his Princess Mononoke is a great film. Do not allow conventional thoughts about animation to prevent you from seeing it. It tells an epic story set in medieval Japan, at the dawn of the Iron Age, when some men still lived in harmony with nature and others were trying to tame and defeat it. It is not a simplistic tale of good and evil, but the story of how humans, forest animals and nature gods all fight for their share of the new emerging order. It is one of the most visually inventive films I have ever seen..."

Kenneth Turran of the LA Times - " …Director Miyazaki, who seems to literally breathe fantasy, works in a clean, fluid style that is not afraid to be dark but also takes pleasure in light pastel colors. A legendary perfectionist who avoided computer-generated work until this film and still personally retouched 80,000 of the film's 1,440,000 animation cels, he creates a self-contained world that could not exist without animation, and a more satisfying use of the medium would be difficult to imagine."

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Jay Carr of the Boston Globe - "Epic, mythic, simply terrific, Princess Mononoke brings a new kind of animation experience to the American moviegoing mainstream. What's novel about Hayao Miyazaki's animation isn't so much its style. Although it has its own distinct look, it's comfortingly traditional in its drawing. But American animation almost never attempts the reach Miyazaki unfurls in this medieval Japanese saga. It's teeming with action and enough characters for several stories..."

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Andy Seiler of USA Today - " …Princess Mononoke, which tells the story of a boy's quest to overcome a mysterious affliction after a run-in with a demonic boar, is a must-see for animation fans. Miyazaki portrays nature with a breathtaking touch, from rocks in a rippling stream to a thunderstorm shown from first drops to climactic deluge. But don't expect Disney-level character animation; most of the human characters move identically..."

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Mark Caro of the Chicago Tribune - "...The PG-13 rating on Princess Mononoke is to be taken seriously. At times the movie is startling in its beauty; at others it unfolds like a psychedelic nightmare. You know you're not in Disneyland from the start, as an isolated village finds itself in the path of a raging demon that looks like a giant mass of bloody, writhing worms..."

Michael Atkinson of Mr. Showbiz - "…Hayao Miyazaki's movie looks and feels for the most part like any other lackluster animé. Far from being fluid and startling like Akira and Ghost in the Shell or mournfully poetic like Grave of the Fireflies, Mononoke recalls the stodgy rhythms, stiff characterization, and cheap visual shortcuts that we all as children overlooked in Speed Racer …The story, though drawn out and repetitious, has vivid leaps of unreality…Princess Mononoke could have made up for narrative weaknesses with visual fluency, but Miyazaki's work isn't the best Japanimation can deliver, and there are entire scenes in which the only thing moving are the characters' mouths…"

Andrew O'Hehir of Salon Magazine -

"…Princess Mononoke is more than a terrific animated film. It's a great work of fantasy, a classic quest narrative in the tradition of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, suffused with magic and wonder but also flavored with enough adult sadness and realism that its world brushes awfully close to ours. Maybe George Lucas would make a movie like this if he had the dramatic chops or the largeness of spirit to pull it off; next to the beauty and tragedy of Princess Mononoke, Star Wars: Episode I looks like dim radiation from a dull and distant galaxy…"

Janet Maslin of the New York Times - "W hile watching Princess Mononoke, a landmark feat of Japanese animation from the acknowledged master of the genre, it's very easy to understand the film's phenomenal popularity. Outdone only by Titanic as Japan's box-office champ, this intricate, epic fable is amazing to behold. No wonder the filmmaker, Hayao Miyazaki, is acknowledged as an inspiration among his American counterparts who have reinvented animated storytelling in the post- Little Mermaid era..."

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Wade Major of Box Office Magazine - "Miramax's long-awaited English-dubbed release of the smash 1997 Japanese Anime, "Princess Mononoke" is a curious concoction that perplexes as much as it impresses--a peculiar attempt to mainstream a school of animation that has never achieved more than a niche following outside of Japan. While it's unlikely that Miramax's cosmetic alterations on "Mononoke" will be enough to reverse that trend, neither do they detract from the impact of the original version, insuring, at the very least, support from the all-important core of devoted Anime fans."

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