Giant Chickens!

That's one thing that this movie has that a lot of movies don't.

Most movies have a chicken or two, but how often do you get to see real giant chicken bathing in a hot tub? Not often enough.

OK, the giant chickens aren't real, they only look real because they are brilliantly animated as conceived by Hayao Miyazaki, the creator of the amazing and fabulous animated classic, Princess Mononoke .

It's easy to see why Spirited away is the largest grossing motion picture in Japanese history: The animation is smooth, and the artwork is vivid and realistic. The characterizations are bold and intimate. Even the English voice-overs are tolerable (unlike those in Princess Mononoke .)

It's the story of a young girl's struggle to rescue her parents from an evil spell that has transformed her parents into disgusting, brutish, giant swine; a welcome departure from what most of us have come to expect from a modern blockbuster.