Cinema review: The Pirates! In an adventure with Scientists

The title is really self explanatory.

This is another of those movies were everything is so very very good that I don’t know what to say.

This is stop motion animation. This means that they recreate every scene using puppets and to move them very slooowly, shooting one frame at a time. It’s an incredibly time consuming method but it gives result that are incredibly charming, more so in our modern age where CGI enhanced animations which all looks the same are churned regularly  everywhere.

To be honest they integrated the movie with some CGI enhanced backgrounds, mainly for the seas. But my point is not that CGI is bad, my point is that we use it too much and that, even when it’s used well, there is something in the hand crafted and hand drawn that it’s still unsurpassed and unreplicable.

 This is a product of Aardman Animations, famous for Wallace and Gromit, so if you saw something of their work you know what to expect.

For everybody else this is a crazy nonsensical adventure where the jokes meter is so high that it’s literally difficult to get it all with the first viewing. The backgrounds are full to the brim with awesome tiny details and hidden in jokes, all the while the main crew engage in double entendre and running gags like there’s no tomorrow.

There is no down moment, no stretching the plot because we don’t know what to do now but we need to get to an adequate running time while respecting the sacred three act structure moment. Yes there is that damn three act structure but you don’t care because it’s fun and it’s all done so well that it flows effortlessly from one situation to the next.

An unrecognizable Hugh Grant voices the pirate captain, aptly named pirate captain, you can’t get more “Nomen omen” than this. He really goes out of its box and actually suggested a lot of the gags that were later integrated in the movie.

Conclusion: A masterpiece, even if you don’t like animation you have to see this.