The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012)

I watched this movie during my night shift (yeah security wise nothing really happens at night) and I had a great time. I'm a big Aardman fan, I love Wallace and Gromit, Chicken run and even their more obscure stuff like Angry kid. I can safely say this is just as good as all the stuff I just mentioned. The wit, creativity, flawless animation and fun make this definitely one to at least check out. Not many people talk about this movie so that's why I'm writing this review. Do yourself a favor, if you're a Aardman fan like myself give this a watch. You won't be disappointed

I had read the book this was based on, which was very funny, and being a fan of Aardman, was surprised to hear about this movie, which I guess didn't get a lot of promotion.Its a hidden gem, and well worth a look, particularly if you have kids. Being Aardman stop motion animation, the sets and animation is great, and it has the Aardman sense of humour, not to mention some great acting from Hugh Grant, Imelda Staunton, David Tennant and Brian Blessed. Storyline was great, and the action sequences towards the end were fun. Overall, a hoot, and I think deserves a rating higher than this on IMDb. Definitely one of Aardman's better works.

Pirate Captain leads a pirate ship full of clumsy characters who support him in whatever he does. Too bad that he's not much different from them and as a result, he's never won anything in his entire career. So, determined more than ever to win the Pirate of the Year award, he sets out to find the biggest treasure he can find. Unfortunately, his stubborn and foolish personality leads him into various traps from which he must escape over and over again (with the irreplaceable help of Number Two) hopefully achieving his goal until the end. It's an entertaining piece of animation, determined to put a smile on your face with almost everything it does. Regrettably, it's being let down by a quite superficial and predictable story. It is enjoyable throughout the picture and lovely animated making it a good animated comedy overall.

That's right, I said the "Snow White" fairly tale! So, where's Snow White?? Certainly not Cutlass Liz, the slinky ethnic female pirate leader. Snow White has been transformed into Polly: the last living Dodo, thought long extinct. The minimal crew of the Pirate Captain's ship are mostly dwarf-like, to emphasize the much bigger ego of their taller Captain, each with an unusual physical or behavioral peculiarity, like Snow White's seven dwarfs. Few of them, along with the Captain, come across as being bloodthirsty pirates, hence the label in the title as a 'band of misfits'. The 7 dwarfs were said to be gold miners, presumably not very ambitious ones. The Pirate Captain and his crew, of course, sought to plunder gold and other valuables, again, not very ambitiously. Queen Victoria has been transformed into the equivalent of Snow White's jealous stepmother queen. Like this monster, who thought she had eaten Snow White's heart(but fooled), an overstuffed shrewish Queen Victoria wants to eat Polly, along with other virtually extinct animals, presumably to demonstrate her disregard for all creatures, as well as humans. The Pirate Captain and Darwin, primarily, along with their buddies, collectively take the place of the Snow White's prince, repeatedly rescuing Polly from the Queen's selfish designs. Like Snow White's evil Queen, who is ultimately banished from the kingdom, Queen Victoria is last seen buzzing off into the distance in her out-of-control airship, while her huge ocean liner is disappearing into the deep, Titanic-like, under the weight of an astronomical amount of baking dough(of all things!) that has suddenly engulfed the ship. This symbolizes the victory of the Pirate Captain's Robin Hood-like band of minimal pirates and harmless scientific curiosity seekers over the unbridled greed and cruelty of the Queen. Also, the Pirate Captain has now given up his ambitions to be what he doesn't deserve to be : Pirate of the Year, and Scientist of the Year.In the end, poor Charles Darwin is still frustrated in being recognized as an important scientist. Some in the audience know that his fame will come much later for a much more important general insight than the mere discovery of the last Dodo. He is also frustrated in finding a woman who will love him, with his seemingly unpromising fixation on collecting animal and plant curiosities. In the closing credits, it's suggested that he will try to get cozy with a Soutn Seas maiden: someone much closer to the natural world he loves than the rarefied upper class British women he was brought up with.The unlikely relationship between the Pirate Captain and Darwin much reminds us of the relationship between Captain Jack and the very Darwin-like ship's surgeon Stephen, in the award-winning "Master and Commander", of about a decade ago. Thank's to Darwin's knowledge, Polly is the Captain's possible ticket to both scientific and pirate fame, as well as the queen's pardon. But, the queen expects to exchange a pardon for ownership of Polly: "the feathery heart and soul of the ship". This conflict over Polly's disposition endures for the remainder of the film.Besides Queen Victoria and Darwin, who were historic contemporaries, Black Bellamy was a historic personage, albeit a good century or so before when this story supposedly took place. Bellamy, in fact, is credited with being the most successful pirate during the 'golden age of piracy' in terms of the amount of plunder he captured. This serves as the basis for Bellamy's claim as 'Pirate of the Year' in this story. The real Bellamy was actually, in some ways, rather like the Pirate Captain, known for his mercy and generosity toward his victims, and likening himself to Robin Hood. Thus, he contrasted his employment of robbing the rich with his victim's employment of robbing the poor. In this film, he is portrayed as more resembling his contemporary: the brutal Blackbeard.With the very negative characterization of Queen Victoria, as the only major female human, the screenplay risks coming across as being very misogynic, and thus imparting a negative impression on girls.This is very different from the much more balanced traditional "Snow White" story. Is this expensive production aimed primarily at children or adults? Seems they tried to incorporate elements that would primarily appeal to one or the other, and sometimes to both, perhaps not always successfully. Obviously, the overabundant slapstick is of the sort that primarily appeals to children. On the other hand, some other aspects are probably over the heads of at least the younger children. As an older adult, I found both amusing and boring aspects to the film, but overall, I liked it.I also recommend checking out the non-animated pirate farces: "Double Crossbones", starring Don O'Connor, on You tube or DVD, and "The Princess and the Pirate", starring Bob Hope.