Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2267 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-01-30
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Formats: Animated, Dubbed, PAL
• Original language: Japanese
• Dubbed in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 93 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
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.-- Charles Solomon

Synopsis
From the renowned director of 'My Neighbour Totoro' and 'Princess Mononoke' comes this period, fantasy anime about an Italian, ace WWI pilot who undergoes a transformation to become Porco Rosso, part man, part pig, after witnessing the deaths of other pilots in his last air battle. Under this spell, Porco Rosso survives by taking odd jobs, and finds himself in one comic situation after another as he romances women, rescues the innocent, and looks for a way out of the porcine spell.

Customer Reviews

Best Miyazaki
Probably my favourite Miyazaki film (for now!). The superb animation combined with a rather melancholic tone link it quite firmly with its more famous descendent "Spirited Away". However this film is more whimsical and has some great set pieces that inject a lot of energy. The backdrop of romantic 1930s adventure, the threat of Italian fascism and the trauma of war all underlie, as usual, an apparently mere 'cartoon' or children's tale.

Porco Rosso
I think I bought this as my 7th Studio Ghibli film and it lived up to all of the others. I actually laughed out loud during this film and found how sarcastic Porco can be to be amusing. The voices were great and the landscapes are amazing as usual. Recommend for all Studio Ghibli fans.

Miyazaki really respects women
I was hooked on Ghibli a few months ago and now have all the collection. It is the rolls royce of animation. I love the way that girls and women feature in all his work. More often than not they are the heroines of the movie but even when not Miyazaki is at pains to show that nothing is beyond their capabilities. In this film the genius aero engineer is Fio, a young and beautiful woman who is building her first plane from scratch....and as the italian men have all disappeared, recruited into the army, it is the village women who actually build the plane. The other loves of Miyazaki have got to be: cats, wildlife and the environment, planes and trains.

I will have to be patient until the next Ghibli comes out (Ponyo)