Shiver Me Timbers! This Story...Could Be Better: A Review Of The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists!

(Image above taken from TheMovieDB.org)

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

After seven years since their previous stop-motion animated film, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Aardman Animations came back with The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists! with the subtitle being weirdly changed in the United States to Band of Misfits! for some reason. And it's an excellent and endearing film...well, for partially at least.

Look, what I want to make clear from the get-go is that if you're going to watch the film for its story elements, you're going to be sorely disappointed. It's a painfully run-of-the-mill and predictable 'redemption narrative': main character is made of fun of for being the worst at something, goes out to prove their peers wrong, makes mistakes, is abandoned by their friends, realises their mistake, goes out to correct mistake/s that leads to the return and admiration of their friends and peers. Very little of that overarching narrative is changed in The Pirates! and is, in turn, its biggest and most alarming downfall.

What makes up for its severely lacking story however is its animation, humour and vocal performances. I absolutely adore stop-motion animation and few are more adept in the field than Aardman Animations. The characters, props and sets have the distinctive Aardman look and simply pop with vibrancy and detail, and are filled with little jokes that carry distinctly British references and wit like on the Pirate of the Year Awards form having one of the options for 'Roaring' as the excessively wondrously loud Brian Blessed (who also plays the Pirate King) or the last of the pirate rules in the Pirate Captain's room referencing Gremlins. I particularly liked the 'speaking card' gags with the monkey character, Mr. Bobo. One of my favourites was him throwing the cards up in the air as he falls down a pit, spelling out "AHHHH!"...Yeah, visual gags are really one of those things you need to actually see for them to be funny.

And although not every character is as developed or unique as I would like, none of the actors ever phone in any of their lines. For example, Charles Darwin (David Tennant) is your typical wimpy geekish scientist, but Tennant does a good job of playing the character regardless, to the point where I didn't even know it was him until the credits!

My only wish is that I could praise this film more than that, but the weaknesses of its story prevent that from happening. Also, I thought the choice of music was a bit odd and out of place, using famous (or marginally famous) pop tunes alongside the film's score (which seems to be a bit of a trap many animated films seem to fall into).

Overall: 7/10, maybe lower to a 6/10.