My lasting impressions from The Pirates: Band of Misfits will forever be tarnished by the experience of my 5 year old movie buddy.
My son loves pirates, we have made pirate hats and he has been to pirate themed parties before. There is even a show on one of his kiddie channels devoted to some junior pirates who continually stick it to Captain Hook and his men in endearingly G rated ways.
I love the work of Aardman animation. Have done since Wallace and Gromit first expressed their fondness for cheese.
This should all be perfect right?
Well yes and no.
Apparently it doesn’t matter how witty and amusing the dialogue in a film is – and it is very witty and amusing indeed – talking simply isn’t piratey enough. Even if you’re wearing especially piratey duds and grand pirate hats.
Conversely if things heat up and swords are drawn, this is deemed too piratey.
It seems the middle ground of being just piratey enough was confined to scenes where the pirate ship was cruising around or the Pirate Captain (Hugh Laurie) and his band of misfits were seeking treasure. Unfortunately most of the action takes place on land, and any appearance of treasure was usually closely followed by a fight with someone who was understandably protective of same.
It’s hard being a pirate. Harder being a Dad of a kid who wants to like them but in reality can’t understand what they truly represent even in PG format.
The Pirates: Band of Misfits, is funny and fast paced. It follows the afore-mentioned Pirate Captain, who desperately wants to be named Pirate of the Year despite quite obviously being ill equipped to do so when compared with ‘real’ pirates.
Misfits? Not this lot surely...
His band of Misfits are all similarly too meek, ill equipped or frankly useless to assist in getting the trophy – even the ship’s parrot is in reality a dodo – but they are good natured enough to encourage him to follow his dreams, even though he has failed for 19 years in succession.
A new development occurs though when the ship forcefully boards another vessel only to find one lone man aboard, he is scientist Charles Darwin, and when Darwin points out that the parrot/dodo might be an amazing scientific find worthy of scientist of the year honours, the Pirate Captain is intrigued and concocts a plan. He will use the undoubted scads of treasure resulting from being named ‘Scientist of the Year’ to prove to the board that he is also worthy of ‘Pirate of the Year’, a far more prestigious award in his eyes.
Given that Pirates… is essentially the work of a bunch of guys with balls of play-dough it is visually amazing, the scenes in which the ship carves through the high seas are alone worth the price of admission.
But the film is worthy and endearing beyond that. Despite not being 5 year old pleasing, (sort of) adult me chuckled often at the dialogue which ranged from ridiculous to inspired. The over the top nature of the action and characters lent itself well to animation/claymation or any other ation for that matter, and the voice acting was kooky and uniformly superb. It isn’t important but Salma Hayek’s voice can make even a 5 inch pile of clay seem alluring.
The Pirates: Band of Misfits is perhaps more suitable to the 7 year olds in the family, or the adults who think like them. But it is an entertaining romp for (almost) the whole family, and I will be trying the DVD out on the boy later in the year to see if he feels that it is piratey enough then.
Final Rating – 7.5 / 10. Aardman Animation are the Pixar of balled up dirt with faces on it. That is actually better than it sounds. In a world where (well meaning but) crap like Madagascar and Hop make scads of dollars, it is a crime that genuinely creative and fun films like this fall off the treasure map.
