released 22 may 05 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* PORCO ROSSO, a Japanese animation movie by Hayao Miyazaki, takes place in a semi-fictionalized early 1930s, where sky pirates terrorize the Adriatic, only to be frustrated by a mercenary pilot who happens to look like a pig. He flies a red seaplane and so is known as "Porco Rosso (Red Pig)". The pirates get tired of his interference and recruit an American flying daredevil named Donald Curtis, something of a Douglas Fairbanks JR clone, to deal with Porco, and the battle in the air, as well as for the heart of beautiful lady Gena, is on.
PORCO ROSSO features Miyazaki's customary beautiful animation and other superb production values. It is, however, a piece of sheer fluff, with none of the meat of such Miyazaki films such as PRINCESS MONONOKE or SPIRITED AWAY. In fact, it was designed as a piece of fluff, with Miyazaki flatly stating that it was produced to entertain businesspeople on airline flights (Japan Air Lines was one of the backers of the production).
Miyazaki also adds that, to his surprise, kids love PORCO ROSSO, and it's not hard to see why. It's colorful, exciting, and all good fun, definitely real eye candy for aviation enthusiasts, and with lots of nods to old "flying ace" movies. The script really doesn't have much of a brain in its head -- Porco became a pig, so we are told, when somebody cast a spell on him, with that whole side story immediately dropped and forgotten -- but does it require one? It no more needs a great script than a thrill ride does, and it throws enough at the viewers so they don't care.
One of the fun things is the gang of sky pirates known as the "Mamaiutos", who look like they came right out of an old Fleischer POPEYE cartoon; another is the neat epilogue, which jumps from the 1930s to the 1960s to show the shocking advance of aeronautical technology in that period. In short, this is a very pleasant, nicely produced, absolutely insubstantial movie, and good fun if taken in that spirit.