There’s just something a little bit off about THE PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS. The best way I can explain it is that the film is like watching a comedian you’ve seen be genuinely funny before take the stage on one particular night and just miss with their entire act. They didn’t bomb. It wasn’t as if you walked away booing and exclaiming how badly they suck, vowing never to support their work ever again, because they’re nothing more than a hack. However, no matter how hard they tried to entertain you during their set, nothing seemed to connect – neither their presence nor their punchlines. In this case, Aardman Animations is the comedian, having done strong work in the past with CHICKEN RUN, WALLACE & GROMIT and ARTHUR CHRISTMAS, and their bad night is THE PIRATES!
THE PIRATES! starts out with the promising premise of the Pirate of the Year Awards, having the terribly inept Pirate Captain (voiced by Hugh Grant) throwing his hat into the ring for another year of certain defeat at the hands of one of his far more skilled pirate rivals – Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek), Peg-Leg Hastings (Lenny Henry) and the returning champion Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven). But rather than following through on this competition that might show the lighter side of looting, plundering and pillaging (no raping for a family film), THE PIRATES! throws such an idea overboard. What we get instead is a far less interesting story about the crew’s parrot, Polly, who is actually the last living dodo bird. That sets off a chain of events that has everyone from Charles Darwin (David Tennant) to Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) trying to get their hands on her, while the Pirate Captain learns the importance of friendship over wealth and recognition.
Yawn.
THE PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS really winds up being a tale of two movies, because there’s actually something to the time spent on the Pirate of the Year Awards. The humor clearly rests in pirates coming together to honor anyone, let alone one of their own. There’s something to such a ridiculous concept that its finer details – trophies given for Best Anecdote About A Squid, for example – make it worth expanding upon. However, THE PIRATES! teases us with such originality only to ignore it in favor of the familiar. I mean, the film’s entire third act is pretty recognizable if you’ve ever seen THE FRESHMAN. How you could have Hayek and Piven at your disposal, only to waste them on what really amounts to cameos is a damn shame. There are some good threads in THE PIRATES! which could have led to something special. I got a good laugh out of the Pirate Captain’s Wanted poster offering up a reward of 12 doubloons and a free pen for his capture while his more dangerous cohorts are fetching far more luxurious bounties, but THE PIRATES! never does any more with them. The scorecard on jokes would show far more misses than hits when they’re all tallied, as large spans of time go by throughout the film without as much as a smile from the material.
I know director Peter Lord is trying his best with Gideon Defoe’s script, but there’s not nearly enough comedy that delivers throughout the film, and, for a film in the 88-minute running time range, that can make it seem a lot longer. I found the best bit in THE PIRATES! to be the use of a Flight of the Conchords song during a break-up scene of sorts, and, from the lack of reaction by the family audience I saw the film with, I’m pretty sure that type of humor was completely lost on them. That’s really how THE PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS plays throughout, too, unfortunately. It never connects with its viewers. If you do get it, you won’t find it entertaining. If you don’t, well, then that presents an entirely different set of problems for you.
There’s no question that THE PIRATES! looks fantastic. The creation of these vivid characters, particularly the Pirate Captain, brings some eye candy to the screen for you to marvel at, but there’s not much more that comes to life for THE PIRATES! outside of the stop-motion animation. I had high hopes for BAND OF MISFITS, based on Aardman’s previous track record, but at times the film was as painful as walking the plank, and I can’t really recommend it to you or your family. You may think your kids will like it, but unless you’re down to pay for their impending boredom, I’d suggest remaining docked at home and passing on this one.
-Billy Donnelly
"The Infamous Billy The Kidd"
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