The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Rating

Director

Peter Lord, Jeff Newitt

Screenplay

Gideon Defoe (Book: Gideon Defoe)

Length

1h 28m

Starring

Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Imelda Staunton, David Tennant, Jeremy Piven, Salma Hayek, Lenny Henry, Brian Blessed, Russell Tovey, Anton Yelchin, Brendan Gleeson, Ashley Jensen, Al Roker, Ben Whitehead, Mike Cooper, David Schneider

MPAA Rating

PG

Review

A zany adventure with fewer laughs than your average animated picture, The Pirates! Band of Misfits continues the dispiriting downward trend of one of the most innovative animation houses.

Aardman’s fifth feature-length animated picture tells the story of a ragtag band of pirates whose captain longs to be named Pirate of the Year, embarking on a journey to try and capture the elusive award from three better and more experienced captains. When the captain’s precious parrot is identified by expeditionary Charles Darwin as a dodo, the potential riches to be won at a leading scientific competition leads the band of misfits to London. There, a pudgy and vile Queen Victoria, who abhors pirates, awaits.

One of the elements that helped define the Aardman style was its use of background images and details that don’t have attention drawn to them, but which often feature some of the funniest gags in their films. One perfect example, is the seal on the building for the Royal Society, the leading scientific organization in the city, that says “playing god since 1660.” Were these small bits more common, the film might have had quite a few more subversive laughs. Instead, the film is built around a dodgy premise that never quite elevates the material to hilarious levels.

Part of the issue could be the absence of director Nick Park. He was the creative mind behind the brilliant shorts “Creature Comfort,” “A Close Shave,” “The Wrong Trousers,” and others. While he did co-helm the satisfying but unspectacular Chicken Run, he was co-director of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The difference? The co-director on Chicken Run was Peter Lord, who is one of the co-directors here. Perhaps their style of animation works best in short doses rather than feature-length efforts, but the difference with this picture is night and day.

For the entirety of the film’s length, the broad humor is inconsistently applied. Walking into an Aardman film, you shouldn’t expect very many obvious bits, but in this film, you end up with more than are necessary and the remainder of the laughs are sparse enough that it makes the film a slog to sit through.

Why is The Pirates missing much of what helped elevate Aardman to its vaunted standing in the animation world? It’s difficult to say. Even Pixar has had misfires in its pipeline, but with so few productions coming out of Aardman versus one or two annually from Pixar, it’s certainly not a lack of effort and dedication. A film with that long a lead time should be much more engaging. Of course, pairing with Sony Pictures Animation didn’t help matters. Only Fox is worse. The end result here, while engaging enough in places, just doesn’t quite live up to contemporary productions.

Review Written

June 28, 2022