The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists!
Aardman’s 2012 stop-motion swashbuckler is re-issued in cinemas to entertain a whole new generation.
Hugh Grant gets the bird
Image courtesy of Sony Pictures.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
As Disney and DreamWorks carved out ever-braver new worlds with the help of increasingly sophisticated technology, Aardman Animations was fashioning its own success story in plasticine. Creature Comforts, Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run brought charm and humour to Britain’s own living room and backyard, elevating the mundane to an art form. Here were characters – both human and animal – that people could relate to, with a jolly nice cup of tea at the end of the day. The company’s collaboration with Sony Pictures (their first was Arthur Christmas) retains Aardman’s stop-motion method but is enhanced by 3D and computer technology. And the ‘puppets’ are no longer made of plasticine.
The Pirate Captain (limply voiced by Hugh Grant) is a combination of steel, resin and foam latex. But the problem with this romp is not its artistry. There is still the loving attention to detail and the in-jokes, but the canvas is so vast that any endearing intimacy is lost. Here we have Queen Victoria hanging from an airship, a ludicrous high-speed sprint by bathtub (through the limitless precincts of Charles Darwin’s house, no less) and a runaway amorphous blob brought about by a fusion of baking powder and vinegar. Silly is fine – and is in fact Aardman’s trademark – but Pirates! is off the map. If the story had been a little tighter and the central character less vain and stupid, then we might have had an adventure to root for.
Also known as: The Pirates! Band of Misfits.
Voices of Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, David Tennant, Salma Hayek, Jeremy Piven, Imelda Staunton, Lenny Henry, Brendan Gleeson, Ashley Jensen, Brian Blessed, Russell Tovey.
Dir Peter Lord, Pro Julie Lockhart, Peter Lord and David Sproxton, Screenplay Gideon Defoe, from his own book, Ph Frank Passingham, Pro Des Norman Garwood, Ed Justin Krish, Music Theodore Shapiro.
Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Animation/Aardman Features-Sony Pictures.
87 mins. UK/USA. 2012. Original US Rel: 27 April 2012. Original UK Rel: 28 March 2012. New UK Rel: 14 August 2026. Cert. U.
