The Pirates! Band of Misfits / In an Adventure with Scientists (2012)

Stars: Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, David Tennant, Salma Hayek, Jeremy Piven, Imelda Staunton
Director: Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt

Genre: Animation, Adventure, Family

Rating: C

I’m not exactly sure where to begin in explaining my disappointment in this film.  Trailers for it made it look like a cute animated film about a band of pirates who aren’t exactly good at being pirates and are entering the Pirate of the Year competition.  Silly, yes, but cute.  And in the post-Pixar world, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve come to expect adult friendly children’s films.  Sadly, this really wasn’t what The Pirates! Band of Misfits (In an Adventure with Scientists outside of North America) was all about.  Yes, there were pirates, yes they were incompetent, yes there was a competition, but the actual plot was a lot more than just that – and it was in that extra development that the film really lost me.

The Pirate Captain (Grant) is the captain of a crew of pirate misfits; there’s the Pirate with a Scarf (Freeman), Peg-Leg Hastings, the Pirate with Gout, the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate, the Albino Pirate, and the Pirate Who Likes Sunsets and Kittens.  They are, very much rightly, ridiculed by the pirating world, especially by the Pirate Captain’s nemeses, Black Bellamy (Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Hayak), two surprisingly competent pirates who frequently win the Pirate of the Year Award.  Determined to prove himself, the Pirate Captain and his crew set out to prove themselves, and while doing so they board the Beagle and take Charles Darwin (Tennant) captive.  Yes, that Darwin.  It is at this point that the plot of the film becomes somewhat overly complicated; it is revealed that the Pirate Captain’s parrot is in fact the last remaining living dodo.  Darwin is very much your modern day stereotype of a science geek, - complete with an awkwardness around girls and a crush on someone far out of his league, specifically Queen Victoria (Staunton) – wants to take Polly to the Scientist of the Year awards, where he’s sure he will win both the top prize and the love and affection of the Queen.  The Captain, however, sees this as an opportunity for him to gather a huge booty and thus win the Pirate of the Year Award.  Queen Victoria, however, is adamantly against Pirates and also collects very rare and endangered animals, for her own devious means.  It is up to the Pirates and Darwin to save the day.

If that all seems a little ridiculous, it’s because it is.  In fact, it’s completely ridiculous and over the top.  It claims to be smart, but really it’s just over the top.  The humour is, for the most part, rather dull and a bit dimwitted, it’s talking down to its audience.  The premise of the plot is extremely implausible.  I love a good fantasy as much as the next person, but I hate it when something attempts to situate itself in the real world and then makes the plot overly complicated and unrealistic.  If it was just about a band of misfit pirates (as it was promoted) who were trying to win the Pirate of the Year award it would be one thing, or even if it was just about that time that Charles Darwin accidentally found a dodo hidden as a pirate’s parrot.  Combining the two just takes it over the top, as does Queen Victoria as the villain.  The characters are all really just absurd caricatures, presenting stereotypes and over the top ridiculousness.  In the post-Pixar world it is easy to expect more of a children’s movie, but The Pirates fails to deliver.