"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" called "Princess Mononoke" "a great achievement and a wonderful experience, and one of the best films of the year. [… You won’t find many Hollywood love stories (animated or otherwise) so philosophical." 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." In his review, Dave Smith from "Gamers' Republic" called it "one of the greatest animated films ever created, and easily one of the best films of 1999."