The Pirates! Band of Misfits - The Re(al) - view

Black Bellamy: You want to be Pirate of the Year? Do they just give it to the guy with the fattest parrot?
Pirate Captain: She's not fat, she's just big-boned!
Black Bellamy: She's fat, dude!
[the Dodo vomits on Bellamy]
Black Bellamy: Dude, come on! 

Also known as The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists.

It's fun, pacy, exciting, funny, featuring a quirky captain named - Pirate Captain (yep! last name Captain), a crew of amateur pirates, a Pirate of the Year competition, a secret society with a twisted hobby, Charles Darwin (who is, well, nuts) and a Dodo bird named Polly!!! 

While stop motion may not look glamorous or refined and termed old school, when it comes to Aardman Animations, who brought classics like Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit and Arthur Christmas, you can expect the best. The tweaked Pirates!, compared to their previous projects, a bit by injecting a whole lot of humor blended with intelligent quirks. A gag-fest. The animation is detailed as expected (c'mon it's Aardman!), especially Pirate Captain's luxuriant beard - which was begging to be touched.

Pirate with a Scarf

While some voice actors can be quite distracting, Puss in Boots?, it was till I saw the closing credits that I realized that Pirates! had quite the cast. Featuring the likes of Hugh Grant, Imelda Staunton, Martin Freeman, Jeremy Piven, Salma Hayek, David Tennant, Ashley Jensen and Brendan Gleeson. They were all fantastic. 

Besides the story (which is based on Gideon Defoe's  The Pirates! series, The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists and The Pirates! in an Adventure with Whaling) and the animation; Pirates!' most interesting feature is its characters - especially Pirate Captain and his crew (which consists of The Pirate with a Scarf, Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate, Albino Pirate, Pirate with Gout and Polly)who are warm, lovable, quirky and have the superb ability to disguise whatever the situation made the movie just delightful! Although the crew are a bit off, but the craziest character (besides Pirate Captain) has got to be Charles Darwin and his quest for Queen Victoria's heart (romantically, that is), plus he's got a man-panzee, named Mr. Bobo, for a butler.

Now to the bad guys and the secret society. The film's main antagonist is the pirate-hating Queen Victoria and she just happens to be much more 'badder' than hating pirates because she belongs to a 
über club which consists of world leaders who take unique pleasure in eating rare animals.

Now that's true love

Finally, the character that I fell in love with the most in the film is .... Polly! Yes, Polly the dodo bird! Why? Cause she's adorable! Don't believe me, watch the film. 

Pirates! may be kids - oriented, but the dialogue is quite humorous that the possibility of the adult laughing harder than the child is pretty high. A delightful movie.

Mr. Bobo

Cheers!