Pun Salad

This is an older animated movie (1992), written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki before he made things like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. If you liked those, you'll probably like this, although it's lighter (and funnier) fare.

It's set in an imaginary 1920's. The title character is a mercenary pilot, tasked with thwarting the evil schemes of air pirates prowling the Adriatic. Oh, and he's a pig. Or, more precisely, a human being who (for some reason) has been cursed with porcine features.

Fortunately, the pirates aren't very evil, and not very competent. (The primary pirate will remind you of Bluto in the old Popeye cartoons.) When they abduct a bunch of little girls from a cruise ship, the girls treat it as a grand adventure, crawling all over the pirate airship. Porco rescues them without a lot of trouble.

Realizing they're outmatched, the pirates then hire a dashing, but amoral, American named Curtis to contend with Porco. Curtis also puts moves on the local nightclub sweetheart, Gina; but (as it turns out) she and Porco know each other from the old days…

I was caught up in this ridiculous, but utterly charming yarn. It was dubbed into English by the best talent Disney can hire; I was sure George Clooney was doing Porco, but it turned out to be Michael Keaton doing a very, very good George Clooney impression.