The usually hyperviolent Takashi Miike has made a family film. I'm not sure just what family it's for, but The Great Yokai War plays like a live-action version of a Hayao Miyazaki nightmare. Tadashi is a little boy chosen during a lion dance as the "Kirin Rider," who must go up the nearby mountain to retrieve a sword. He then gets caught up in a battle between Yokai (spirits) and a once-human demon with some cool stop-motion robots at his disposal.

While the movie could have been 20 minutes shorter, I was entertained throughout. The yokai are all over the map. The first one Tadashi meets looks like one of those singing kung-fu hamsters. There's a Kappa, a traditional turtle-man. One's an umbrella with eyes and a tongue. Another is just a big wall. Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill also shows up, this time as a whip-toting, blonde-beehived Asian Paris Hilton in cahoots with the bad guy. Miike's made his most accessible, though not his best, film to date.