Skip This: The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Movie Poster for the Pirates!

Another night and another long story about how I have nothing to do is what my review readers have probably come to expect of these introductions, but alas it was not this way last night. Instead, I rather had a lot of stuff that I could be doing and I chose to watch this movie. You see, I could have been playing my video games and ranking up, I could have been reading one of my new books, and I could have been watching a couple of television shows that I have fallen a little bit behind on. Instead I chose to watch this movie, for I knew that it was made by the same stop-motion folks that put together the entire Wallace and Gromit series as well the Chicken Run movie. Now while I found Chicken Run a little bit disappointing, I would still recommend that movie for young folks because of the nicely woven tale and beautiful stop motion. But I do admire and adore the creators for their Wallace and Gromit stop-motion pieces, as those were expertly done and very friendly for all ages. And with such an inspiring and big cast, how could they go wrong I thought. At any rate, here is my review for their most recent movie the Pirates! Band of Misfits.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits [2012]

The plot to this movie is actually rather simplistic in design, which is quite alright for a children's movie. Basically, you have a pirate captain that is so named Pirate Captain (by which I mean his name is literally Pirate Captain) and he has a ship full of his strange and unique crew. And every year on Blood Island there is a Pirate of the Year convention to which they name the best pirate the pirate of the year. Now it is quite quickly spoken that the pirate of the year is the sea dog that brings back the most booty from their pirating expeditions, and of course our faithful heroin has never actually won pirate of the year. So he and his crew set a course to go and plunder as many ships as possible and make pirate of the year.

Yet to the other side of this tale it would not be very interesting unless he had some sort of enemy to worry about. In this case it is the royal crown, which is headed by Queen Victoria. She apparently really hates pirates, and they make that blatantly obvious in the trailer where I believe that is actually a direct quote. At any rate, it is taken note that England has taken control of the world, with many colonies and the largest navy of all around, but they still cannot seem to deal with their pesky pirate problem. And so begins the tale of the Pirates! Band of Misfits.

Theatrical Trailer for the Pirates! Band of Misfits

I actually did not have a problem with the start of the movie's plot line, but rather where they took it from there. It seems that not only is the captain Pirate Captain unlucky, but rather idiotic as well. And instead of focusing their jokes around the fact that he is not the smartest in all the land, they rather pull the plot with his stupidity. This was rather disappointing, because when a plot is being tugged along by a single character, the other ones rarely get any of the limelight and so they become unexposed. I guess what I am trying to say is that a movie so titled about pirates and a whole band of misfits actually becomes a movie about a single pirate who is just an idiot. So that sets-up the movie for failure from the beginning, as since the plot cannot actually evolve due to an arrangement of interesting things that are bestowed upon these pirates but instead must be pushed forward by his problems that he never learns anything from. And of course, while focusing to make Pirate Captain a very likable character, it ends up shunning the other characters. So the plot in this movie was a bust if you ask me.

But even beyond that, I felt that some things mentioned for setting up the plot was rather a waste of time as well. For instance, they portray the English as having a massive fleet of ships all over the world, yet we never actually get to see more than one English ship throughout the movie. That disturbs me, why even include the scene where they so diligently describe the fleets when they never actually get seen? Instead, skip that and save the time to make more jokes. Another part that i thought made this a bust is this is a stop-motion claymation and yet they never took part in actually trying to use that to its full effect. They do not have to stay within the reaches of reality, and yet they tried ever-so-hard to keep everything as close to what can really happen as possible. I would have much liked to see a more interesting and intense use of the claymation to actually make interesting and intricate scenes.

Though all of what I have written above does not come close to even showing my biggest concern with this movie. I wish the creators would have dived more into the actual crew! They were this intriguing set of misfits, as portrayed by the title, but we only get glimpses of their personalities! Maybe if the plot had revolved more around them going on an adventure we would have been able to see more sides to each character. Instead, we are forced to watch the captain in each scene and it ruins what I consider the most interesting part of the characters, which is the other characters. And even beyond this, there were more pirates than just the crew that never actually got any time even though they were quite interesting. I consider this to be the biggest wasteful part of the movie.

Still, if you have children and you want something rather tame, maybe a bit dull for the developing brain even, then this might be a great movie to pick. It has absolutely no adult-made themes (even though the opportunity was presented multiple times for jokes for adults) and it lacks a plot that you really want your little ones to revisit in the future. And yet still I recommend it because at least your children will be entertained by the very egocentric captain and it might take them off your hands for an hour and a half. Though personally, I'll leave this movie as a skip this.

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