‘Pirates’ features treasure trove of laughs

“The Pirates! Band of Mis­fits” fol­lows Pirate Cap­tain (Grant) and his way­ward crew as they try to gain recog­ni­tion amongst a sea of pirates that are all com­pet­ing for the cov­eted “Pirate of the Year” award. Pirate Cap­tain must prove him­self in order to beat, Cut­lass Liz (voiced by Selma Hayek) and the reign­ing cham­pion, Black Bel­lamy (voiced by Jeremy Piven) both of who were able to score more booty in their plundering.

Pirate Cap­tain and his crew imme­di­ately take to the seas and hijack every ship they can in order to solid­ify their place at the award cer­e­mony. They come up a lit­tle short when the ships are car­ry­ing ghosts, chil­dren and lep­ers instead of gold. Just when the cap­tain was think­ing of retir­ing from pirat­ing in order to pur­sue a prof­itable career in hand­made baby clothes, the crew talks him into one last hur­rah as they approach another ship. This ves­sel held no gold either. Instead it was car­ry­ing, Charles Dar­win (voiced by David Ten­nant). Angered, Pirate Cap­tain forces Dar­win onto the plank. This is when Dar­win notices that the “par­rot” on Pirate Captain’s shoul­der is actu­ally a great sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery that would be worth “a for­tune” at the sci­ence con­ven­tion in Lon­don. Dar­win wants the prize for his own rea­sons and quickly reveals his own deter­mi­na­tion for notoriety.

I was for­tu­nate enough to see this movie in 3D. The set design, back­ground ele­ments and char­ac­ters are so highly detailed that I often missed a spo­ken line because I was too awed by the glam­our of the details. Lon­don was so real­is­tic with its cob­ble­stone roads, dis­tressed signs and aged iron fences that I some­times for­got they were just clay and only a few inches tall. Every scene has its own lit­tle good­ies. There are whim­si­cal paint­ings in Pirate Captain’s quar­ters that will make you laugh. Darwin’s cabin is full of jarred spec­i­mens and artic­u­lated skele­tons that look like you could pick them right from the screen. While I am sure these ele­ments are present if you were to view the 2D ver­sion of the movie, I have seen the life that 3D has given them and I must say that it is worth the few extra dol­lars per ticket. The tech­nol­ogy has come a long way since you saw “Jaws 3” with the red and blue lenses. I urge you to give it a try.

When you think of pirates the word “adven­ture” stands out as a promi­nent aspect. While there is plenty of adven­ture, I have to say that “com­edy” is what took the wheel in this movie. I laughed out loud MANY times. There were jokes, puns and sight gags galore. There was plenty of slap­stick and a fair amount of sub­tle humor to top it off. Bobo (the mon­key) has so many fan­tas­tic lines with­out ever say­ing a word. His char­ac­ter, instead, holds up nicely printed cards with var­i­ous words and phrases that add a great deal of humor to his scenes. There were moments that the pirate crew had to switch into clever dis­guises in order to blend in. I laughed along with the rest of the the­ater EVERY time they did, too. There were so many good laughs that it felt rem­i­nis­cent of hang­ing out with an old friend and shar­ing funny sto­ries of your past. The adult humor was so well-timed and exe­cuted that my six-year-old was none the wiser when all of the grown-ups in the the­ater were chuckling.

This movie would appeal to kids, teens, adults and any­one who can appre­ci­ate stop-motion ani­ma­tion and good comedic ban­ter. There is adven­ture, com­radery, betrayal, redemp­tion and plenty of whole­some fun in this movie. A per­fect fam­ily night.

Posted by Scott Hall on Apr 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.