Daily News (New York)

                         October 29, 1999, Friday

SECTION: New York Now; Pg. 62

LENGTH: 488 words

HEADLINE: THIS DARK 'PRINCESS' ISN'T FOR KIDS  TO DISNEY FANS, JAPANESE
ANIME FEATURE MAY SEEM ANEMIC; IT'S ALSO GORY & A TAD SOPHISTICATED

BYLINE: By JACK MATHEWS DAILY NEWS MOVIE CRITIC

BODY:

PRINCESS MONONOKE. Japanese animated feature, with English-language voices
of Billy Crudup, Minnie Driver, Claire Danes, Billy Bob Thornton. Directed
by Hayao Miyazaki. Running time: 133 mins. At area theaters. Rated PG-13:
Violence, gore. 2 1/2 Stars

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.

In outline, "Princess Mononoke" is the story of Ashitaka (Billy Crudup), a
young prince in feudal Japan who, after rescuing his village from a giant,
cursed boar, goes on a quest to learn the cause of the animal's curse and
to save himself from the same fate.

Along the way, Ashitaka gets caught in a struggle between the denizens of
Iron Town, a mining and manufacturing outpost dedicated to converting iron
ore into weapons of war, and a super-powerful wolf pack determined to save
the forest from human destruction.

Eventually, the hero is forced to choose sides, to align with wolf-pack
leader San (Claire Danes), a woman raised and now running with the wolves,
and the seductive Lady Eboshi (Minnie Driver), who runs Iron Town with an
iron hand.

Done mostly in the style of hand-painted classic animation, with occasional
digital assists, "Princess Mononoke" is indeed a thing of beauty and
imagination. The boar monster, which looks like a lumbering wad of giant
worms, and the form-changing spirit of the woods are fantastic inventions.

But American audiences accustomed to the quality of animation coming out of
Disney and its major-studio rivals won't be that impressed. The backdrops
are static compared with those in "Tarzan," for example, and when people
and animals speak, their mouths have no more movement than what we see on
the faces of Saturday-morning cartoon characters. The whole movie feels as
if it had been dubbed by ventriloquists.

Still, the rich mythological elements of "Princess Mononoke" distinguish it
as something new - at least, in this country - and its box-office fate will
go a long way in determining whether anime has a future on these shores.

GRAPHIC: FABLE FOR OUR TIMES San (voiced by Claire Danes) and Ashitaka
(Billy Crudup) in "Princess Mononoke," an animated epic from Japan