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

We live in a twilight world.

Tenet (2020)
(SPOILERS) I’ve endured a fair few confusingly-executed action sequences in movies – more than enough, actually – but I don’t think I’ve previously had the odd experience of being on the edge of my seat during one while simultaneously failing to understand its objectives and how those objectives are being attempted. Which happened a few times during Tenet. If I stroll over to the Wiki page and read the plot synopsis, it is fairly explicable (fairly) but as a first dive into this Christopher Nolan film, I frequently found it, if not impenetrable, then most definitely opaque.

She was addicted to Tums for a while.

Marriage Story (2019)
(SPOILERS) I don’t tend to fall heavily for Noah Baumbach fare. He’s undoubtedly a distinctive voice – even if his collaborations with Wes Anderson are the least of that director’s efforts – but his devotion to an exclusive, rarefied New York bubble becomes ever more off-putting with each new project. And ever more identifiable as being a lesser chronicler of the city’s privileged quirks than his now disinherited forbear Woody Allen, who at his peak mastered a balancing act between the insightful, hilarious and self-effacing. Marriage Story finds Baumbach going yet again where Woody went before, this time brushing up against the director’s Ingmar Bergman fixation.

You can’t climb a ladder, no. But you can skip like a goat into a bar.

Juno and the Paycock (1930)
(SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s second sound feature. Such was the lustre of this technological advance that a wordy play was picked. By Sean O’Casey, upon whom Hitchcock based the prophet of doom at the end of The Birds. Juno and the Paycock, set in 1922 during the Irish Civil War, begins as a broad comedy of domestic manners, but by the end has descended into full-blown Greek (or Catholic) tragedy. As such, it’s an uneven but still watchable affair, even if Hitch does nothing to disguise its stage origins.

Anything can happen in Little Storping. Anything at all.

The Avengers 2.22: Murdersville
Brian Clemens' witty take on village life gone bad is one of the highlights of the fifth season. Inspired by Bad Day at Black Rock, one wonders how much Murdersville's premise of unsettling impulses lurking beneath an idyllic surface were set to influence both Straw Dogs and The Wicker Mana few years later (one could also suggest it premeditates the brand of backwoods horrors soon to be found in American cinema from the likes of Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper).

James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season.

Moonraker (1979)
Depending upon your disposition, and quite possibly age, Moonraker is either the Bond film that finally jumped the shark or the one that is most gloriously redolent of Roger Moore’s knowing take on the character. Many Bond aficionados will no doubt utter its name with thinly disguised contempt, just as they will extol with gravity how Timothy Dalton represented a masterful return to the core values of the series. If you regard For Your Eyes Only as a refreshing return to basics after the excesses of the previous two entries, and particularly the space opera grandstanding of this one, it’s probably fair to say you don’t much like Roger Moore’s take on Bond.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

My dear, sweet brother Numsie!

The Golden Child (1986)
Post-Beverly Hills Cop, Eddie Murphy could have filmed himself washing the dishes and it would have been a huge hit. Which might not have been a bad idea, since he chose to make this misconceived stinker.

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.

When I barked, I was enormous.

Dean Spanley (2008)
(SPOILERS) There is such a profusion of average, respectable – but immaculately made – British period drama held up for instant adulation, it’s hardly surprising that, when something truly worthy of acclaim comes along, it should be singularly ignored. To be fair, Dean Spanleywas well liked by critics upon its release, but its subsequent impact has proved disappointingly slight. Based on Lord Dunsany’s 1939 novella, My Talks with Dean Spanley, our narrator relates how the titular Dean’s imbibification of a moderate quantity of Imperial Tokay (“too syrupy”, is the conclusion reached by both members of the Fisk family regarding this Hungarian wine) precludes his recollection of a past life as a dog.

Inevitably, reviews pounced on the chance to reference Dean Spanley as a literal shaggy dog story, so I shall get that out of the way now. While the phrase is more than fitting, it serves to underrepresent how affecting the picture is when it has cause to be, as does any re…

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog