Related Reviews

Hayao Miyazaki

• Hauru no ugoku shiro (Howl's Moving Castle) (2005)
• Ponyo (2009)
• The Wind Rises (2013)

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Porco Rosso

An elephant that flies by flapping his giant ears. A puppet that transforms into a boy. In the context of other classic animation that indoctrinated me as a kid, there's nothing especially odd about the concept of Porco Rosso, which tells the story of a man cursed by transformation into a pig. And yet, to discover Porco Rosso as an adult is to understand that there's something deliciously weird about it. Certainly, there's no denying that writer-director Hayao Miyazaki's idiosyncratic auteurism, both in eccentric content and style, entertains in the most delightful way. And indeed these qualities are in full evidence in Porco Rosso, the 1992 flying-ace film (and blockbuster in its native Japan) that intriguingly prefigures Miyazaki's 2013 flight epic The Wind Rises.

Yep, Porco Rosso ("the Crimson Pig") isn't just any man-turned-swine. He's also an Italian WWI veteran fighter pilot who's the scourge of air pirates over the Adriatic Sea. Though Disney, thanks to superfan John Lasseter, distributes Studio Ghibli films like this one stateside, this is not the sort of story the studio built its reputation on. Voiced by Shuichiro Moriyama in the Japanese-language version and Michael Keaton in the English-language version, Porco gruffly goes about his business as a mercenary who routinely ruins the plans of the likes of the Mamma Aiuto ("Mamma, Help!") gang, pausing only to arrange repairs to his plane and have soulful conversations with the quietly smitten Madame Gina (Tokiko Kato; Susan Egan).

Porco's tough exterior slowly gives way to the women in his life, both Gina and young mechanic Fio Piccolo (Akemi Okamura; Kimberly Williams-Paisley), granddaughter of garage owner Mr. Piccolo (Sanshi Katsura; David Ogden Stiers). Both women touch something deep in the pilot, stoking flashback memories of his wartime encounters with mortality and suggesting to him that he needn't necessarily be resigned to getting his only enjoyment from taking to the skies in daredevil fashion between grim drinking sessions at Gina's Hotel Adriano.

Further impetus to break out of the doldrums comes from American ace Donald Curtis (Akio Otsuka; Cary Elwes), who harbors Hollywood dreams and designs on Gina's heart. When Porco and Curtis go toe to toe, a wager puts Fio's life in the balance: should Porco win a dogfight duel, Curtis will cover Porco's repair debts, and should Curtis win, he will take Fio's hand in marriage. The somewhat ramshackle plotting suits Miyazaki's breath-of-fresh-air style, which follows moods like changing winds. Action-comedy yields to melancholy drama or moony romance or swoony blue-sky pastoral before roaring back into action-comedy again.

Through it all, Miyazaki captivates, largely through beautiful hand-drawn animation and character design that's flexible enough to encompass elegant strokes (suited to Madame Gina) and a deliberately squiggly roughness (perfect for the roughly defined personalities of the airheaded air pirates). The "cinematography" of the flying sequences proves particularly extraordinary, whether in a thrills-and-spills vein or a poetic one. And though the story touches on politics and even profundities of the human experience, Miyazaki's light touch and overriding sense of fun promise that children of all ages will give themselves over to ninety-four minutes of fantasy that do a heart good.