MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Megamind To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

danbranan If you are a Miyazaki fan, you owe it to yourself to see this film. If you aren't familiar with his work, this might be an excellent introduction. It is less mystical than most of his other works, but contains many of the other main story elements that Miyazaki is fond of including in his films. The animation is gorgeous and the story is really fantastic! In typical Miyazaki fashion, lines between good and evil are somewhat blurry, although he does take a pretty hard stance against fascism (whew!). He masterfully takes a tale which is suitable for children and makes it simultaneously interesting and touching for adults. As a former military member, I actually choked up at one point in the film, which I won't spoil here with any details. It took me a little while to get used to Michael Keaton's voice as Porco (seriously, he's supposed to be Italian!) but it only took about 10 minutes to get past that and get caught up in the story. It has some blatantly silly plot devices, but they are forgivable as a children's story. Miyazaki effortlessly blends these elements with real drama, excitement and emotion that only adults and precocious children will truly appreciate.

Gregory Porter In Porco Rosso, we follow an Italian WWI pilot who was cursed to look like a pig. The story consists of Porco fending off sky pirates and the attacks of an American ace in the inter-war period.This is a Miyazaki movie so, if you're familiar with his movies, it won't surprise you to hear that the animation is wonderful. It's colorful and happy. Porco's introduction and the introduction to his relationship with the pirates give you a good indication of the tone of the movie.We see Proco lounging on a secluded beach. He is called on the radio to go fend off some pirates who are robbing a cruise and, to make matters worse, they've captured a class of schoolgirls!Now, I cringed when I heard "schoolgirls" because, you know, I thought hyper-sexualized high school girls (aka early Brittany) but it was just elementary school children. I suspect it was a translation thing or maybe a cultural terminology issue. Anyway, we cut to the pirates and the one groans, "Do we have to take all 15?" "Oh course! We can't split them up from their friends!" And then they go on to let the kids climb all over the plane while being "kidnapped."Even when Porco comes to the rescue the scene is light-hearted. Porco shoots out the pirate-plane's engine and even lets them keep a little of their loot to pay for repairs. "I don't want to be putting them out of a job," Porco explains.I saw the English dubbed version. I'm generally a proponent of original audio with subtitles but, in this case, the dub was perfectly good for the movie. Michael Keaton does a great job of voice acting Porco. The voice of Meg from Disney's Hercules is the voice of Porco's love interest. Do you remember Everybody Loves Raymond? Well, Raymond's brother (the one with the deep voice) is a pirate alongside the voice of Patrick Star from Spongebob Squarepants. The daughter in Father of the Bride voices the spunky engineer. It's a solid B-grade cast.When I was describing the cast to a coworker, he said that a mark of a good B-grade cast is when you say, "Do you remember that show? Well, the side character from that show was in this." That is, you know the actor not through their name but through a point of reference.I would highly recommend Porco Rosso especially for kids. It's fun and happy and I'll probably see it again at some point.

John Richards (monolith94) I had been putting off watching Porco Rosso for quite some time. It wasn't so much that I was anticipating not liking it. Rather, it was more a trepidation that while good, Porco Rosso wouldn't quite measure up to the other Miyazaki films which I've loved.I should have known better.The simplicity of the cover, and the description of the plot that I had in my mind were so much less than what Porco Rosso contains. The marketing, advertising, and so forth, place emphasis on the struggle between Porco and the pirates of the Adriatic. The second point of plot typically mentioned is the "curse" that he has fallen under. In truth, neither of these things form the real backbone of the story: psychology is at the heart of this narrative.A film simply about a bounty hunter versus pirates could be a fine ride, if executed in a way which stirs. However, without the kind of psychological backdrop that we get in Porco's character, it wouldn't be possible to really move the audience. What raises this story from simply engaging to stirring, moving, is our main characters' relationship to their individual and shared pasts. In a really clever way, the film introduces this haunting aspect of the past not through the main character, but through the character of Gina. Of a similar generation, Gina introduces this idea during her first conversation with Porco, where she receives news that her husband has been confirmed dead, she seems unusually unemotional. As she expresses to Porco, she has shed so many tears already, that she finds she has no more left to give. The carnage of world war 1 and the vagaries of life in a world where fate can snatch love from us has left her emotionally drained.Where Gina is melancholy and stoic, Porco broods and isolates. As the sole survivor of a battle where Gina's first husband died, he feels personally responsible. This sort of survivor's guilt is reflected with his constant self-deprecation; constantly we see signs of him expressing a low sense of self-worth. He doesn't deny his skill as a pilot, but what he does deny is that he is in any way a "good guy." When Gina tells him that her husband didn't make it home alive, he responds "the good guys never do," making explicit this contrast between himself and a good guy.His profession as a mercenary is almost ideal for his state. It allows him to pretend that he's only in it for the money, while at the same time he has put himself in a position to do good works: saving children, defending the monied defenseless, etc. He does have a sense of morality, of course. We see this in his careful targeting of his opponents planes: he always aims to cripple and shoot down, never to kill the opposing pilot. It is difficult for him to see the evidence that we see, however. We understand the regret he feels as a sign of his ethical standards; he dismisses it out of hand. One imagines that, for him, that is a bare-minimum, rather than a characteristic that one can be proud of.The devices that film uses to achieve the character development of Porco can, at times, be a bit trite. The character of Fio is perhaps a bit too on-the-nose as the young idealist who, unshackled by a painful past, is able to help shake off some of the emotional armor that Porco has surrounded himself in. However, Miyazaki saves the character by simply writing her as an intelligent, brave, young woman whom the audience can both respect and relate to. Even more intelligently, although Fio develops an admiration for and a crush on Porco, this thread isn't really developed. As a character, Fio wouldn't really work as Porco's love interest. It would add on the additional cliché of older-man younger-woman and that would just take Miyazaki's use of common story devices too far.Gina is the more realistic love interest for Porco, and just as a sense of feminism imbues the character of Fio, so too does a sense of feminism shape Gina. Far from the virgin-whore duality that infects so many female characters, Gina is fully realized as a woman with hopes and desires, losses and memories, that make her an equal of Porco. She has been married, and she has known love, but this doesn't "spoil" her. Rather, it has matured her.Even more impressively, the relationship between Gino and Porco is based on friendship, a friendship which goes back to happier times. How refreshing to see romance kindled in such a realistic way, as compared to the constant barrage of films where characters either fall in love with each other for narrative convenience.As good as this movie is, I suspect that its greatest impact can be felt on those who are struggling with the emotions of Gina and Porco. To struggle with one's past is no uncommon thing, and those who are working to set aside feelings of loss and self-loathing will probably find the greatest amount of catharsis as Porco slowly comes to realize that he doesn't need to define himself as a pig any longer. Certainly, only those who have run out of tears will be able to fully appreciate the emotional desolation the Gina describes.

kurosawakira I have very fond memories of this film. I saw "Kurenai no buta" (1992) as part of a retrospective of Miyazaki's works in Bologna presumably some five years ago, and I have fond memories not only of the film but the experience of seeing it in Italy (I'm an Italian teacher and studied at L'Università di Bologna). This is a wonderfully detailed trip to the Adriatic Sea and Milan, and the language is used to great effect. Yet what has stayed with me the most ever since is the wild sense of fun the whole film exudes. Now that I'm slowly marching through most of Miyazaki's oeuvre, it's a nice moment for a dear revisit.And wild fun it is, one of the funniest works of film art I've had the privilege to witness, including what I consider to be funny: "Bakumatsu taiyôden" (1958), the best of Chaplin and Keaton, "The Falls" (1980). If going to the movies would always be like this! I think the filmmakers' love for film can make the viewers love film, and this is an example of perfectionist, lovely filmmaking. Miyazaki is not only talented, he's intuitive and able to translate that intuition into the film. It's very impressive how he sculpts mood and atmosphere, at times lingering nostalgically, at others romantically, at others tragically. But the undersong is always satiric, heavily ironic and quite simply such a hoot there were many moments when I just couldn't stop laughing and applauding the wit and imagination behind it all.Much of this stems from Marco being such a marvellous character. Falstaffian in his glee, he embodies the film. Surrounded by beautiful women, Fio becomes our surrogate by the end, and Jina-sama (Gina) the other end of the spectrum; not rash and wild just as Fio, but reasonable, steadfast. It's a wisely and successfully created web of interaction.An etymological obiter dictum: the word that became part of the anime studio's name, "ghibli", is an actual Italian word. It comes from the Arabic "qibli", another word for the sirocco (the word "sirocco" comes from the Greek 'sirokos'). It was the point of Studio Ghibli to bring some fresh air to the anime industry. But the word has another context, and the film integrates it beautifully: "Ghibli" comes from the name of an Italian Caproni aircraft used in World War II, and in the film the new engine installed to Marco's aircraft bears the name. In that sense Marco's mission becomes not only the embodiment of Miyazaki and the studio, but also of a whole ideal. And still Marco, or the Marco in Fio (or vice versa), will always be our surrogate for adventure.It's a lovely ending, as well. During the whole film Miyazaki has played with us when it comes to Marco's spell, and much is made of how things seem. Yet, in a stroke of genius and wholly appropriate to the context of the film, we never really see. It's all a secret, that is, something so personal that it ceases to exist, in fact couldn't exist, in words or images. It is only implied, and then carried in our hearts.