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

The Illumi-what-i?

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) (SPOILERS) In which Sam Raimi proves that he can stand proudly with the best – or worst – of them as a good little foot soldier of the woke apocalypse. You’d expect the wilfully anarchic – and Republican – Raimi to choke on the woke, but instead, he’s sucked it up, grinned and bore it. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is so slavishly a production-line Marvel movie, both in plotting and character, and in nu-Feige progressive sensibilities, there was no chance of Sam staggering out from beneath its suffocating demands with anything more than a few scraps of stylistic flourish intact.

Ziggy smokes a lot of weed.

Moonfall (2022) (SPOILERS) For a while there, it looked as if Moonfall , the latest and least-welcomed – so it seems – piece of apocalyptic programming from Roland Emmerich, might be sending mixed messages. Fortunately, we need not have feared, as it turns out to be the same pedigree of disaster porn we’ve come to expect from the director, one of the Elite’s most dutiful mass-entertainment stooges, even if his lustre has rather dimmed since the glory days of 2012.

What’s so bad about being small? You’re not going to be small forever.

Innerspace (1987) There’s no doubt that Innerspace is a flawed movie. Joe Dante finds himself pulling in different directions, his instincts for comic subversion tempered by the need to play the romance plot straight. He tacitly acknowledges this on the DVD commentary for the film, where he notes Pauline Kael’s criticism that he was attempting to make a mainstream movie; and he was. But, as ever with Dante, it never quite turns out that way. Whereas his kids’ movies treat their protagonists earnestly, this doesn’t come so naturally with adults. I’m a bona fide devotee of Innerspace , but I can’t help but be conscious of its problems. For the most part Dante papers over the cracks; the movie hits certain keynotes of standard Hollywood prescription scripting. But his sensibility inevitably suffuses it. That, and human cartoon Martin Short (an ideal “leading man” for the director) ensure what is, at first glance just another “ Steven Spielberg Presents ” sci-fi/fantas

All I saw was an old man with a funky hand, that’s all I saw.

The Blob (1988) (SPOILERS) The 1980s effects-laden remake of a ’50s B-movie that couldn’t. That is, couldn’t persuade an audience to see it and couldn’t muster critical acclaim. The Fly was a hit. The Thing wasn’t, but its reputation has since soared. Like Invaders from Mars , no such fate awaited The Blob , despite effects that, in many respects, are comparable in quality to the John Carpenter classic – and are certainly indebted to Rob Bottin for bodily grue – and surehanded direction from Chuck Russell. I suspect the reason is simply this: it lacks that extra layer that would ensure longevity.

Are you telling me that I should take my daughter to a witch doctor?

The Exorcist (1973) (SPOILERS) Vast swathes have been written on The Exorcist , duly reflective of its cultural impact. In a significant respect, it’s the first blockbuster – forget Jaws – and also the first of a new kind of special-effects movie. It provoked controversy across all levels of the socio-political spectrum, for explicit content and religious content, both hailed and denounced for the same. William Friedkin, director of William Peter Blatty’s screenplay based on Blatty’s 1971 novel, would have us believe The Exorcist is “ a film about the mystery of faith ”, but it’s evidently much more – and less – than that. There’s a strong argument to be made that movies having the kind of seismic shock on the landscape this one did aren’t simply designed to provoke rumination (or exultation); they’re there to profoundly influence society, even if largely by osmosis, and when one looks at this picture’s architects, such an assessment only gains in credibility.

That, my lad, was a dragon.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) (SPOILERS) It’s alarming how quickly Peter Jackson sabotaged all the goodwill he amassed in the wake of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. A guy who started out directing deliciously deranged homemade horror movies ended up taking home the Oscar for a fantasy movie, of all genres. And then he blew it. He went from a filmmaker whose naysayers were the exception to one whose remaining cheerleaders are considered slightly maladjusted. The Desolation of Smaug recovers some of the territory Jackson has lost over the last decade, but he may be too far-gone to ever regain his crown. Perhaps in years to come The Lord of the Rings trilogy will be seen as an aberration in his filmography. There’s a cartoonishness to the gleeful, twisted anarchy on display in his earlierr work that may be more attuned to the less verimilitudinous aspects of King Kong and The Hobbit s. The exceptions are his female-centric character dramas, Heavenly Creat

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991) (SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

This risotto is shmackin’, dude.

Stranger Things Season 4: Part I (SPOILERS) I haven’t had cause, or the urge, to revisit earlier seasons of Stranger Things , but I’m fairly certain my (relatively) positive takes on the first two sequel seasons would adjust down somewhat if I did (a Soviet base under Hawkins? DUMB soft disclosure or not, it’s pretty dumb). In my Season Three review, I called the show “ Netflix’s best-packaged junk food. It knows not to outstay its welcome, doesn’t cause bloat and is disposable in mostly good ways ” I fairly certain the Duffer’s weren’t reading, but it’s as if they decided, as a rebuke, that bloat was the only way to go for Season Four. Hence episodes approaching (or exceeding) twice the standard length. So while the other points – that it wouldn’t stray from its cosy identity and seasons tend to merge in the memory – hold fast, you can feel the ambition of an expansive canvas faltering at the hurdle of Stranger Things ’ essential, curated, nostalgia-appeal inconsequentiality.

You keep a horse in the basement?

The ‘Burbs (1989) (SPOILERS) The ‘Burbs is Joe Dante’s masterpiece. Or at least, his masterpiece that isn’t his bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you masterpiece Gremlins 2: The New Batch , or his high profile masterpiece Gremlins . Unlike those two, the latter of which bolted out of the gate and took audiences by surprise with it’s black wit subverting the expected Spielberg melange, and the first which was roundly shunned by viewers and critics for being absolutely nothing like the first and waving that fact gleefully under their noses, The ‘Burbs took a while to gain its foothold in the Dante pantheon. It came out at a time when there had been a good few movies (not least Dante’s) taking a poke at small town Americana, and it was a Tom Hanks movie when Hanks was still a broad strokes comedy guy ( Big had just made him big, Turner and Hooch was a few months away; you know you’ve really made it when you co-star with a pooch). It’s true to say that some, as with say The Bi

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989) (SPOILERS) There’s Jaws , there’s Star Wars , and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws ’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy , to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “ more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie ”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “ mainly boring ”. Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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