And that's why, in a straight fight, a shark would probably beat a Dracula.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists

(2012)

Or, if you’re American, The Pirates! Band of Misfits. I was hitherto unfamiliar with Gideon Defoe’s The Pirates! Series of novels (the fifth of which was published last year) but on this evidence (he also wrote the screenplay) he’s a witty and inventive children’s author, one astutely able to bridge the gap between material appealing to children and to adults.

Defoe’s main character draws on a number of British comedy traditions, chief of which is the pompous career man who is actually inept at his job. There’s more than a dash of Blackadder in the mix with the Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) too, although in this case the position of the right-hand man (Martin Freeman) who knows better (as opposed to Baldrick, who certainly doesn’t) is a mainstay.

Defoe embraces anarchic and surreal humour throughout, attaching it to the through-line of the Captain’s wish to win the Pirate of the Year competition (replete with Britain’s Got Talent-esque references; the panel of judges is highly amusing). Roundly ridiculed by his piratical peers, the Captain sees a means of attaining glory when Charles Darwin (David Tennant, whose vocals I didn’t recognise) identifies his pet “parrot” Polly as an extinct dodo. Feting for this discovery awaits in London, but the reveal of nefarious plans for the bird by the thoroughly unscrupulous Queen Victoria creates a dilemma for the Captain.

There’s much that makes Pirates! instantly appealing, not least Hugh Grant’s enthusiastic rendition of the Captain. Polly is an adorable character, and hinging the plot around her is a masterstroke. Most of all, the decision to make the Queen an evil schemer is welcome and unusual, particular for a kids’ movie that might be expected to reserve some respect for royalty. The status quo is cheerfully mocked throughout, be it the sovereign rule or scientific rigour. Charles Darwin is identified as a self-interested nerd who just wants to impress girls, which half works but his characterisation is one of the few areas that the screenplay feels a little over-familiar.

This is Peter Lord’s first full-length feature since he co-directed Chicken Run with Nick Park in 2000. Mostly, he has restricted himself to executive producing Aardman releases. If Lord doesn’t quite have the visual flair of Park, his sense of humour is just as full-bodied. Pirates! is as enjoyable, if not more so, for its incidental sight gags as it is for the main story. These are abundant, but a few choice ones include the pictures on the Captain’s wall of previous adventures, Brian Blessed as the best choice for roaring on the Pirate of the Year awards form, the hot water bottle/sock parrot-substitute and Bobo the monkey’s entire character arc.

The script isn’t afraid to dive into potentially bad taste gags; the Elephant Man appears in a pub, a leper ship (referred to as plague ship) is replete with limbs dropping off and the Captain refers to using babies “as squid bait”. There are also numerous jokes concerning scantily clad ladies (one of the “male” crew is “surprisingly curvaceous”). If the results are hit and miss, it’s nevertheless refreshing that the parameters of taste and decency are considered broader than your average Hollywood ‘toon, while never becoming more than slightly risqué (and thus something parents should worry about). The all-embracing attitude (“This makes electricity look like a pile of crap!”) works more often than it doesn’t because you’re kept unsure of what level the next joke will be aimed at. But the best moments come from the careful laying of foundations for a joke earlier within the script (“girl guides disguised as scientists”, the sea monster “just” being a decoration on all ocean charts).

Aardman’s brand of stop motion (or, in some cases, CGI that resembles stop motion) animation has tended to prove a more difficult sell in the US. Their films, Chicken Run aside, have tended to underperform there. Pirates! was no exception, making three-quarters of its gross in the rest of the world. It may be incidental, but one of the positives of Pirates! is the sense that this isn’t a product of focus-group testing. Any moral message is breezily underplayed, rather than pronounced (I say this with Madagascar 3 fresh in my memory), and as a result what sticks in the mind is the free rein given to the fun and adventurousness of the tale.

***1/2

Comments

No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.

He is a brigand and a lout. Pay him no serious mention.

The Wind and the Lion (1975) (SPOILERS) John Milius called his second feature a boy’s-own adventure, on the basis of the not-so-terrified responses of one of those kidnapped by Sean Connery’s Arab Raisuli. Really, he could have been referring to himself, in all his cigar-chomping, gun-toting reactionary glory, dreaming of the days of real heroes. The Wind and the Lion rather had its thunder stolen by Jaws on release, and it’s easy to see why. As polished as the picture is, and simultaneously broad-stroke and self-aware in its politics, it’s very definitely a throwback to the pictures of yesteryear. Only without the finger-on-the-pulse contemporaneity of execution that would make Spielberg and Lucas’ genre dives so memorable in a few short years’ time.

Another case of the screaming oopizootics.

Doctor Who Season 14 – Worst to Best The best Doctor Who season? In terms of general recognition and unadulterated celebration, there’s certainly a strong case to be made for Fourteen. The zenith of Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe’s plans for the series finds it relinquishing the cosy rapport of the Doctor and Sarah in favour of the less-trodden terrain of a solo adventure and underlying conflict with new companion Leela. More especially, it finds the production team finally stretching themselves conceptually after thoroughly exploring their “gothic horror” template over the course of the previous two seasons (well, mostly the previous one).

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.

They literally call themselves “Decepticons”. That doesn’t set off any red flags?

Bumblebee (2018) (SPOILERS) Bumblebee is by some distance the best Transformers movie, simply by dint of having a smattering of heart (one might argue the first Shia LaBeouf one also does, and it’s certainly significantly better than the others, but it’s still a soulless Michael Bay “machine”). Laika VP and director Travis Knight brings personality to a series that has traditionally consisted of shamelessly selling product, by way of a nostalgia piece that nods to the likes of Herbie (the original), The Iron Giant and even Robocop .

You don’t know anything about this man, and he knows everything about you.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s two-decades-later remake of his British original. It’s undoubtedly the better-known version, but as I noted in my review of the 1934 film, it is very far from the “ far superior ” production Truffaut tried to sell the director on during their interviews. Hitchcock would only be drawn – in typically quotable style – that “ the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional ”. For which, read a young, creatively fired director versus one clinically going through the motions, occasionally inspired by a shot or sequence but mostly lacking the will or drive that made the first The Man Who Knew Too Much such a pleasure from beginning to end.

That’s what people call necromancer’s weather.

The Changes (1975) This adaptation of Peter Dickinson’s novel trilogy carries a degree of cult nostalgia cachet due to it being one of those more “adult” 1970s children’s serials (see also The Children of the Stones , The Owl Service ). I was too young to see it on its initial screening – or at any rate, too young to remember it – but it’s easy to see why it lingered in the minds of those who did. Well, the first episode, anyway. Not for nothing is The Changes seen as a precursor to The Survivors in the rural apocalypse sub-genre – see also the decidedly nastier No Blade of Grass – as following a fairly gripping opener, it drifts off into the realm of plodding travelogue.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog