The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Running Time: 88 minutes.

Media: Cinematic release.

It's been a while since I sat down and enjoyed something a film like this. I actually saw this with my fiancée's god-daughter's brother about a month or two ago while her sister and her friends went to see Mirror, Mirror for her birthday. As hot as Julia Roberts is, I preferred to see this...

Now I have to confess, I didn't hear a lot of hype about this film at all, so I kinda was thinking this would be a little "hokey" (that's become my new favorite word of late!) and then I heard that Hugh Grant was going to be voicing the lead role... My head turned... This was not going to be any ordinary film...

How surprised I was when I was proven right... This film, while crafted to enthuse and entertain youngsters like my young friend Aidan, also had a number of small Easter Egg moments where the odd adult joke was cleverly hidden away. Not only that, the cast such as Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Jeremy Piven and Salma Hayek brought wonderful entertaining renditions of their characters that I couldn't peel my eyes away from the screen. The animation is very much in the clay stop-motion genre that one would see with Wallace and Gromit but it has been ramped up a few notches...

The plot line was entertaining in itself, The Pirate Captain (played by Grant) tries to get himself into the competition as the Pirate of the Year, an annual match which involves a number of categories which alas, the Pirate Captain cannot well-compete in. IN his attempts to plunder a number of ships with his rag-tag crew, he comes across Charles Darwin who discovers that his "parrot" is actually the last living and surviving dodo. In the process, the Pirate Captain gets embroiled with a pirate-phobic Queen Victoria and a number of other characters which throw chaos, joy and laughter into the storyline.

Now, while this isn't knee-slappingly funny... I did chortle a little at some of the jokes being made, as well as smile secretly to myself... I guess in the case of the adult watching the film, as opposed to the child watching it, there's a considerable difference... But this is a wonderful film that I would take kids to, and also be entertained myself... This movie does receive a bountiful four stars for the amazing effort that was put into this film, and it shows.