The Case for Being Piratical

How can anyone turn up an Aardman movie?  The group that brought the world Wallace and Grommit are a smart shade of bonkers, and their movies are amusing if not necessarily hilarious.

With a fairly intriguing preview, The Pirates: Band of Misfits looked like it would be a great watch.  And, to cut to the chase, it was.

Part of the fun was guessing which prominent British thespian plays who.  I spotted who the first mate was, and I had read that Captain Pirate was voiced by... that guy, but Queen Victoria seemed eerily familiar throughout even though I never guessed who vocalised her.

There is plenty to amuse: from a cast of stereotypical Pirate crew members (the Curvaceous Pirate with the bright orange beard was my favourite); to Charles Darwin (voiced by a Doctor!) and all his ruminations about how his attempts at scientific discovery would never make him a hit with the ladies; to an injoke that completely tickled my funny bone, a form where Pirates had to rate their various attributes with the scale of booming voice from timid all the way up to the heights of Brian Blessed - and low and behold, the almighty lungs of Mr Blessed were let loose in a small role later on.  Oh, how I smiled.  And then of course, my companion noted that there was good use of a Flight of the Conchords song as well - I was not as quick on that uptake, unfortunately.

 

The story... well, I am trying not to give too much away, as there's not much to it.  This film is for kids after all.  But there are lots of moments and quips for adults as well, all G rated and family-oriented of course. 

At times, the film does drag a little - not because it's a long movie (its just over an  hour and a half), but just because it has to go through some fairly slow motions to get some of the life lessons and learnings across.  But once the adventure gets off land and on to the high seas, things are very much a roller coaster ride (to mix my metaphors).

Due to the way things were arranged at the movie theatres, I had to go and see this in a 3D screening, and unfortunately, despite the glorious animation, the third dimension added nothing to anything.  Staying for the end credits, we saw there were about 7 people of the crew of hundreds involved in the 3D transfer, so perhaps that explained how completely underwhelming that experience was.  But no matter - as I could forget the sill Readings glasses on my nose, I could enjoy the more intellectual delights that this sort of movie provided.

Verdict: The Pirates is a huge amount of fun, with lots of silliness and more serious sorts of humour to keep everyone entertained, for the most part anyway.  But play "guess the voice actor" for each of the characters and see how many you get right.  And then realise how many, like JP for me, you just completely miss...  7 peg legs out of 10.