Pirates Band of misfits

Though they don’t produce all that many, the British seem to excel at animated films, mostly because they don’t let the fact that the characters on screen are made of clay, paint, or pixels get in the way of treating the audience like more than brainless schoolchildren. The Pirates! Band of Misfits continues this tradition, the only awkward thing about it being the title.

These pirates are such misfits that they don’t even have names – they refer to themselves by unique characteristics. There’s the Pirate with a Scarf (Martin Freeman), the Pirate with Gout (Brendan Gleeson), the Albino Pirate (Anton Yelchin), the Strangely Curvaceous Pirate (Ashley Jensen), and so on. And they love their captain (Hugh Grant), who is of course called The Pirate Captain, and who provides the best thing about pirate life – regular ham dinners.

In the greater pirate world, however, the Pirate Captain is ridiculed as a weak and ineffective plunderer with an incredible knack for attacking ships with no treasure. A multiple-time loser at the Pirate of the Year Awards, he’s laughed at by better contenders Peg Leg Hastings (Lenny Henry), Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) and Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven). And since the award is all about the booty, it seems likely the poor Captain is going to lose again.

But fortune smiles on the misfits when they meet the not-yet-famous scientist Charles Darwin (David Tennant), who instantly notices that the Captain’s rather obese parrot is not a parrot at all, but a dodo bird, long thought extinct. Presenting Polly to the Royal Scientific Society would earn Darwin a huge prize, an opportunity the Captain jumps at as a shortcut to winning his own award. That is, if he doesn’t run afoul of the pirate-hating Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton), who has her own interest in the bird.

It’s mostly business-as-usual for director Peter Lord and Aardman Studios, creators of previous claymation-style films such as Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromit series. Fans will immediately recognize the look, with its bug-eyed and chiclet-toothed characters, and sets filled jokes in the background, but the visuals here seem even more detailed than usual. The water scenes are particularly impressive, achieving near-realism through additional CGI effects.

And, also as usual, it’s the movie’s blend of dry wit and outright silliness that carries the day. These pirates are buffoons, yes, but they’re also quite good at what they do, which leads to all sorts of hilarious non-sequitur moments. The ease at which the “Scientist Captain” is able to infiltrate the Royal Society is as entertaining a sequence as any of the action scenes.

The cast is fantastic. Those used to seeing Hugh Grant as a stammering romantic lead will hardly recognize his voice here, delivering the Captain’s bombast and vulnerability in equal measure. Freeman and Tennant do equally well as advisors competing for the Captain’s attention. There’s even a monkey, trained by Darwin to speak using cue cards, that little ones will especially love.

It all adds up to a film that all audiences will enjoy on different levels. The Pirates! Band of Misfits is a voyage worth signing on for.