In theaters

SPIRITED AWAY, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, 124 minutes, rated PG. Starts tonight, Movie City 8, Bangor.

“Spirited Away,” the new film from Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki (“Princess Mononoke,” “My Neighbor Totoro”), is an animated “Alice in Wonderland” and “Wizard of Oz” for a new generation.

Thanks to its inclusion on dozens of critics’ top 10 lists and the recent awards it has received – Best Animated Feature by the Broadcast Film Critics Association, Top Animated Film by the National Board of Review, co-winner of the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival, among others – the film is finally generating a buzz here in the United States.

Its U.S. distributor, Disney, is reaching out to American audiences by touting the film as the most successful movie ever to be released in Japan, earning a record-breaking $234 million in that country alone while also, in the process, sinking “Titanic” as Japan’s previous box-office champ.

As written by Miyazaki, “Spirited Away” is animation as art. It lives up to its title, spiriting audiences away with an imagination that never feels restricted by the pat limitations of the Hollywood machine because, frankly, the Hollywood machine wasn’t allowed to touch it until it was ready to be dubbed into English.

Instead, the hands at work here are Miyazaki’s, whose beautifully detailed animation is compelling in ways that are at once powerful and poetic, creating a quirky atmosphere and surreal mood that will remind some of the Brothers Grimm.

The film follows Chihiro (voice of “Lilo & Stitch’s” Daveigh Chase), a sullen 10-year-old girl who, as the film begins, is unhappily moving to a new house with her parents.

When her father decides to take a shortcut and swings off the main thoroughfare, he unwittingly leads them down a long, winding road, at the end of which is a dark tunnel protected by a stone god.

Naturally, curiosity pulls everyone out of the car and into that tunnel, which stretches into nothingness before opening to reveal a fantastic new world. It’s a world that initially seems deserted until nighttime falls, when tired spirits seeking a little relaxation and fun arrive en masse and Chihiro’s parents are inexplicably turned into two huge, grunting hogs.

Without giving too much away, the crux of Chihiro’s conundrum goes like this: If she’s to help her parents save face – quite literally, in this case – and return to human form so they all can go home, she must dig deep and find the key to her own individuality while also defeating the vicious Yubaba (Suzanne Pleshette), a crazed bathhouse queen determined to slaughter Chihiro’s parents if she doesn’t pass a series of tests.

What ensues is surprisingly complex, emotional and deceptive, saying more in its contemplative moments of silence than most of today’s predictable animated movies say with their legions of talking, singing animals. The movie is filled with action, some of which might be too scary for younger children. For older kids and their parents, “Spirited Away” is a smart film that knows what it means to be a child. Best of all, it never condescends.

Grade: A

On video and DVD

THE MASTER OF DISGUISE, directed by Perry Andelin Blake, written by Dana Carvey and Harris Goldberg, 78 minutes, rated PG.

Here’s the good news: When it came to unseating “Battlefield Earth” as the worst movie in recent memory, it took Hollywood three years and hundreds of films to do so. The bad news? When they did it, they did it in a big way.

The new king of crap is Perry Andel in Blake’s “The Master of Disguise,” a comedy whose big set piece involves its star, Dana Carvey, donning a disguise that turns him into a gigantic walking cow pie and whose biggest recurring joke features a villain named Bowman (Brent Spiner) giggling himself into uncontrollable fits of flatulence.

It’s enough to make the Church Lady lose her religion.

In the film, Carvey is Pistachio Disguisey, a dimwitted waiter at his father’s Italian restaurant who “ah speeka like dees” and who “ah-lika the ladies with ah big-ah bum.” That he’s a moron is a given, but that doesn’t prevent Pistachio from discovering a talent for mimicry, which comes in handy when he must imitate everything from a turtle to a snake-charming swami in an effort to save his father (James Brolin) and mother (Edie McClurg) from certain doom.

The film, which Carvey co-wrote with Harris Goldberg, is about as much fun as a vacation on the Gaza Strip. It’s incomprehensible dreck, a muddled, unfunny bore that’s stunning in its ineptness and its utter waste of talent. At my screening last August, people were either disguising their laughter as catatonic silence or they were lulled into a coma.

Let’s all hope they’re doing well now.

Grade: F

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, occasionally on E! Entertainment’s E! News Daily, Tuesdays and Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.