Reception
Princess Mononoke received extremely positive reviews from film critics. The Daily Yomiuri's Aaron Gerow called the film a "powerful compilation of Miyazaki's world, a cumulative statement of his moral and filmic concerns." Leonard Klady of Variety said that Princess Mononoke "is not only more sharply drawn, it has an extremely complex and adult script" and the film "has the soul of a romantic epic, and its lush tones, elegant score by Joe Hisaishi and full-blooded characterizations give it the sweep of cinema's most grand canvases." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated "Princess Mononoke is a great achievement and a wonderful experience, and one of the best films of the year." Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly called the film "a windswept pinnacle of its art" and that it "has the effect of making the average Disney film look like just another toy story." However, Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post stated that the film "is as spectacular as it is dense and as dense as it is colorful and as colorful as it is meaningless and as meaningless as it is long. And it's very long." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said that the film "brings a very different sensibility to animation, a medium views as completely suitable for straight dramatic narrative and serious themes." As of September 2012, the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 94% approval rating based on 84 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. It offers the consensus: "With its epic story and breathtaking visuals, Princess Mononoke is a landmark in the world of animation." On Metacritic, the film achieved an average score of 76 out of 100 based on 29 reviews, signifying "generally favorable reviews."
Roger Ebert placed the film sixth on his top ten movies of 1999. Princess Mononoke became the highest grossing film in Japan until it was surpassed by Titanic several months later.
Princess Mononoke ranked 488th on Empire's list of the 500 greatest films. Terry Gilliam ranked the film 26th on Time Out's 50 greatest animated films. It is also number 26 on Total Film's 50 animated movie ranking.
In January 2001, it was the top-selling anime in the United States, but despite this the film did not fare well financially in the United States. It grossed $2,298,191 for the first eight weeks.
Princess Mononoke is the first animated feature film to win Best Picture in the Japan Academy Prize. For the 70th Academy Awards ceremony, Princess Mononoke was the Japanese submission to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not successfully nominated.
Read more about this topic: Princess Mononoke: Music From The Motion Picture
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