From Amazon.com
Porco Rosso (
The Crimson Pig, 1992) ranks as Hayao Miyazaki's oddest film: a bittersweet period adventure about a dashing pilot who has somehow been turned into a pig. Miyazaki once said, "Initially, it was supposed to be a 45-minute film for tired businessmen to watch on long airplane flights... Why kids love it is a mystery to me." The early 1930s setting enabled Miyazaki to focus on the old airplanes he loves, and the film boasts complex and extremely effective aerial stunts and dogfights. In the new English dub from Disney, Michael Keaton as Porco delivers lines like "All middle-aged men are pigs" with appropriate cynicism, but his voice may be too familiar for some Miyazaki fans. Susan Egan makes a curiously distant Gina, the thrice-widowed hotel owner bound to Porco by years of friendship; Kimberly Williams is more effective as the irrepressible young engineer Fio.
Porco Rosso may be an odd film, but Miyazaki's directorial imagination never flags. (Rated PG: violence, alcohol and tobacco use)
--Charles Solomon
Review
Porco Rosso is that rare animated film that will be enjoyed more by adults than by children -- certainly more than by very young children, who will be entertained visually by Porco but probably not enraptured by the narrative. Nor should they be, for Porco, with its melancholy air, 1930s-era setting, sense of nostalgia, smoky bars, and mature concerns, is not aiming for them. Indeed, in some ways Porco feels like a 1940s Warner Bros. film -- or perhaps like a 1970s look back at a 1940s Warner Bros. film -- that just happens to be animated and happens to feature a hero who has been turned into a pig through some strange enchantment. Visually, Porco is nothing short of splendid, featuring a vibrant palette that never turns garish, beautiful backgrounds and settings, delicate but forceful linework, and forceful character design. Indeed, director Hayao Miyazaki's characters seem influenced by a whole host of cartoon/comic strip artists, including Herge and E.C. Segar. The animation is not without flaws; occasionally the movement is stretched out a tad too long, and facial expressions are sometimes a little lacking. But none of this seriously detracts from the beauty of the film. Miyazaki's screenplay is a marvelous blend of the romantic and the adventurous, making good use of stock situations but finding the truth beneath them and allowing for a generous amount of deadpan dialogue. That dialogue is handled marvelously by the English-language cast, from Michael Keaton's weary Porco to Kimberly Williams' utterly engaging Fio. To sum it up, Porco is a treasure. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
DVD ~ Hayao Miyazaki
DVD ~ Yoshifumi Kondo
DVD ~ Hiroyuki Morita
DVD ~ Hayao Miyazaki
DVD ~ Hayao Miyazaki
