Movie Review: The Pirates! Band of Misfits
In my more recent weekly box office columns, I pointed out a few times that British-based Aardman Animation has yet to find much success across the Atlantic except in very rare cases. Its initial full-length feature Chicken Run and the movie adaptation of their greatest claim to fame, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit remain the most popular and financially successful of the company’s efforts in the United States, but the rest of the company’s ventures have never quite accomplished the same sort of British invasion that the Beatles led in the 1960s. Its Creature Comforts television show aired less than three episodes before cancellation by CBS (though its entire run was later rebroadcast on other channels), Arthur Christmas made over $100 million outside of the U.S. and only $49 million here, and its most recent offering, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, despite being the company’s first 3D offering, has barely made a stir here while making quite a hefty profit overseas. Well, determined to find out if the company’s revenue is a sign of declining quality, I took it on myself to watch the film (though only in its 2D glory, having missed the 3D version) and see if the film is an overlooked gem or a rightful domestic bomb.
Based on the book series The Pirates! (more specifically, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, which is also the name of the film in the United Kingdom), The Pirates! Band of Misfits follows the appropriately named Pirate Captain (voiced by an almost unrecognizable Hugh Grant) and his similarly named-by-their-descriptions crew, including the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate (Ashley Jensen), who they cannot recognize as a woman in a horribly fake beard. Upset that he has never won the Pirate of the Year award (and is up against tough competition again this year), Pirate Captain vows to land the biggest haul of booty in his career…which is completely sidetracked when he storms the ship of Charles Darwin (David Tennant), who informs them that their “big-boned parrot” Polly is actually a dodo, long thought to be extinct. Promised great rewards if they take Darwin and Polly to London for a scientific exhibition, things spiral out of control when Pirate Captain has to deal with a pirate-loathing Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton), Darwin’s lust for scientific glory, and his own bruised ego.
In terms of its technical and acting merits, The Pirates! Band of Misfits succeeds admirably. Director Peter Lord brings the studio’s stop-animation process to greater heights, resulting in a film that is both beautiful to look at and jaw-dropping when you realize the main action is shot with hand-moved, frame-by-frame “claymation” (only matched by Tim Burton and Henry Selick for professional mastery), with CG reserved for background work and post-production clean-up. The voice acting is top-notch, with a virtual who’s who cast from both sides of “The Pond,” including Anton Yelchin as the overeager Albino Pirate and Jeremy Piven as Black Bellamy, Pirate Captain’s biggest rival for the Pirate of the Year award. Everyone gets a chance to put in a one-liner here and there, but the show stealer award may have to go to a character who never says a word, Darwin’s chimp-“man”-zee butler Bobo, who communicates in a variety of amusing note cards. Though I did not see the 3D version, it was filmed in the process and it shows…many shots are framed with it in mind, and there are enough “pop-out” moments to make me think it would add to the experience rather than detract from it.
A scene from “The Pirates! Band of Misfits.”
Where the film does seem to fall down is in the laughs department. This doesn’t mean the film isn’t funny (it is, and in numerous ways), but what may be the problem is that the humor is very…well, British. As a longtime fan of Monty Python and other British comedy, I’ve grown accustomed to a lot of what England has had to offer. Such is not the case of the film’s target audience (except for some of the gags that got it a PG rating, which will blissfully sail right over the heads of children and into the properly ruined minds of the adults present). It is all very well for me to find the cameo of character actor Brian Blessed yelling at the top of his lungs amusing, but for most children unaware of such 30-year-old comedies like The Black Adder, he is just another voice in the crowd. So, too, are the numerous background bits that Aardman loves to include, such as a bar that promotes “cockney baiting” on the premises (not to worry, it is not at all filthy, just silly). Add to it that the film just is not as cute and cuddly as a Wallace & Gromit short, and you have film that, of all of Aardman’s releases, does not translate as well without understanding a lot of British humor.
That, really, is the biggest shame. While The Pirates! Band of Misfits has performed well enough in worldwide sales to put rumors of a sequel afloat, that it has not done well in the U.S. is not proof positive that Aardman is on a decline. It may not be as accessible as their earlier efforts, nor is it as eminently quotable, but it is still a very joyful romp with memorable characters and a good sense of fun. If you missed out on it at the theaters, there is no reason to miss it when to comes to video…even if you are not the world’s greatest fan of British comedy, The Pirates! Band of Misfits is charming and inoffensive entertainment for all ages. Well, maybe slightly offensive, but only if you are really stodgy.
Seth Paul
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