Review: 'The Pirates! Band of Misfits'
21.05.12
The Pirate Captain to Salma Hayek, Brendan Gleeson, Imelda Stanton, Anton Yelchin and Jeremy Piven.
All of them sat in a recording booth and struggled to find funny things to say or funny ways to say the not-so-funny things in the script. Amusing in small doses, “Pirates” is the first Aardman film to suffer a serious shortage of sight gags, the first where the whimsy feels forced.
Hugh Grant’s Pirate Captain is all Hugh Grant stutter and “glittering eyes and glorious beard.” As a pirate, he’s a bust, though his crew adores him. He figures he’s due for the “Pirate of the Year” award. But he’s always come up short in the booty and pillaging department. There’s always a Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek), Peg Leg Hastings (Lenny Henry) or Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) to top him.
And so it appears it will be in the 1837 awards, until he captures Charles Darwin (David Tennant), a scientist who craves fame as much as The Pirate Captain. And Darwin recognizes the Captain’s pet “parrot,” Polly, as something altogether more amazing. She’s the last Dodo bird.
Source: The State Journal-Register