Porco Rosso (1992)

Porco Rosso (1992)

4/10

Starring the voices of

Shūichirō Moriyama

Tokiko Kato

Akemi Okamura

Akio Ōtsuka

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Note: This review has spoilers

Not as great as I expected it to be in comparison to the other Studio Ghibli animated movies I have seen, or to what I expected from Hayao Miyazaki. The plot for me took a while to pick up and I found myself spending half the time meeting everyone who either has a part to play or will be mentioned as an influence on the second half of the film.

Then the plot for me dragged a little and never fully took hold of my attention until the movie had an abrupt end. I guess the short answer to this will be I do not get why a seemingly short story has a long plot/screenplay.

I also did not find much to applaud in the animation and the whole mystery of why Porco was a pig, I guess is not worth any minute to give a full detail explanation.

The movie plot introduces us to a bounty hunter plane flying world war 1 hero named Porco Rosso. Porco used to be human until some weird curse turned him into an anthropomorphic pig. It starts with a quite funny hijacking and kidnapping of a ship by some air pirates. They from what we gather not only took the valuables from the ship and its occupants, but the children onboard too. They had the hope of using the children hostages to further their escape.

That is when Porco is called in to help remedy the problem. We see him take off (with some difficulty in his red air craft) and the comedy. From here we are dragged down a long path of lazy conversations. Where we see Porco meet other characters, fix his plane and run away because there is a bounty on his head and just fly off to go fight a needless punch fest elsewhere.

I can understand the slight romantic gesture of one of the ladies to him, there is history between the two and she knew him before he became the Pig man he is now. Then there is another weird I don’t know what to call it romantic gesture towards him from another lady he just met, who is the granddaughter of his mechanic. That I do not get.

I will most likely not going to see this film again in the future and in a way wished I had taken the time to see another of Miyazaki’s films.

Porco Rosso regardless of my take was a commercial success and a critical one (to my surprise). There is even an English Disney dub, where Michael Keaton voiced the lead character Porco.