The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Movie and book differ enormously - but both are spot on
The book is great. The movie is great. That doesn't usually happen. I guess it is because Gideon Defoe, the author of the book, also wrote the screenplay for the movie, intending one not to be a "spoiler" for the other. The movie was definitely more of a kids' movie, where the pirates were the ragtag underdogs struggling to keep up in the increasingly competitive pirate world (you are judged for your "booty"--double entendre?). The book has different characters and a completely different villain! That is how much the stories differed. The book also contains more grown-up humour - more people being run-through by swords, more blood, more walking the plank, more steely pirate bad-assedness. Queen Victoria is one crazy woman in this movie, enough to get PETA up-in-arms for ages. The other pirates the Pirate Captain competes against for the Pirate of the Year Award (Salma Hayek, Jeremy Piven) are swashbuckling good fun, even if they are more than a little rude toward the beloved Hugh...

Joyous genius!
After years of disappointment the Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) resolves to finally win the Pirate of the Year competition and so embarks on a series of raids on passing ships in the hope of earning sufficient booty to compete with the his rivals Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) and Black Belamy (Jeremy Piven). However he is still plagued by bad luck with the best produced by a succession of raids being the capture of Charles Darwin (David Tennant). Still at least Darwin is able to identify that Pirate Captain's beloved parrot Polly is in fact a dodo, supposedly extinct for over a hundred years. This gives them both an idea...!

Pirates! is a gloriously hilarious, exquisitely produced movie. Its very much a children's movie but with plenty of sly asides to keep adults on their toes as well. The sets are stupendous and almost beg a second viewing in themselves to allow the viewer to try to aborb all the teeming detail. Both the voice performances of the cast, and the painstaking...

great for the family
I'm really picky about kids' movies. If my daughter enjoys it, fine, but she isn't what you might call discerning. This is one of the few that I actually enjoyed watching with her. Sharp humor, clever writing and fantastic to look at. It even has David Tennant! What else could you want?

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