There's a whole lot going on in the Japanese anime  fantasy "Tales From Earthsea," so why is it such a bore? It could be because this 2006 production from famed Studio Ghibli ("Princess Mononoke," the Oscar-winning "Spirited Away"), while covering dungeons and dragons, wizards, witches and the quest for eternal life, is so stiff and humorless it rarely if ever engages its audience.

And, really, who is its audience? Although being released by family-friendly Disney, "Earthsea," directed and co-written by Goro Miyazaki (son of Ghibli co-founder and veteran filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki) and based on a series of books by Ursula K. Le Guin, touches on such grave topics as patricide, child abuse and slavery. It also features deaths by strangulation and immolation as well as a nasty bit with a flying severed limb.Kids may be less put off by all that, though, than by the film's uninspired hand-drawn animation, visual flatness and elongated running time.