The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists Review

There are a few things in cinema that can be described as a safe bet. One is a Chris Nolan film is probably going to be pretty good. Another is Jeff Bridges being extremely watchable in anything he’s in. You can also add an Aardman production almost always being a good thing to that list.

The folks who brought you Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run have opened their plasticine kit once more to bring us a nautical but nice pirate adventure, with added scientists. Hugh Grant voices the logically named Pirate Captain, whose sole ambition is to at last win the coveted Pirate of the Year Award. After a chance encounter with Charles Darwin, he realises his best chance of plundering enough booty to impress the judges is to use his trusty pet dodo Polly to win the Royal Society’s similar Scientist of the Year prize money, whilst avoiding the infamously pirate-averse Queen Victoria.

Like Arthur Christmas before it, Aardman have assembled an excellent cast to voice their clay models. The on-form Grant heads up the talent, flanked by David Tennant, Imelda Staunton and Ashley Jensen, to name but four. There’s also Salma Hayek, Jeremy Piven, Martin Freeman, Lenny Henry, Brendan Gleeson and Brian Blessed to name six more.

Similarly to the recent Muppets reboot (we’re being rather spoilt for decent family-fare at the moment it seems), the strengths of The Pirates! are in its audience-spanning appeal and its frighteningly consistent laugh rate. Gideon Defoe’s script, an adaptation of his own tongue-in-cheek novel, is responsible for a great deal of humour, but as we’ve come to expect from Aardman, there are also hundreds of sight gags littered throughout the film, meaning you’re never waiting more than several seconds between giggles. The humour is pitched perfectly to please both sprogs and grown-ups. Defoe’s series of Pirates!books are primarily aimed at adults in the first place and their deep sense of irony and wry humour has not been lost in transition to the screen. Thankfully though, kids are highly unlikely to be alienated or left out by the jokes and the film is without the air of smugness that pervades such ‘a bit of blue for the dads’ films like the Shrek franchise.

Credit has to be given to Aardman for how visually stunning the film is. The level detail in the models is astounding and watching the whole thing in motion is a feast for the eyes. I’m not normally one for re-watching films, but I’d make an exception for Pirates! firstly to try and catch the jokes I missed the first time around and secondly simply to marvel at the incredible attention to detail the film boasts.

This is the part of the review where I’d normally mention a few detracting aspects of the film, but for the first time in ages, I don’t think I can name a single thing I didn’t like about the film. Given the choice, I’d see it in 2D, but that’s just a personal preference. The Pirates! is a wonderful achievement that deserves every success. You timbers will be well and truly shivered.

Arthur Christmas Review

Arthur Christmas: is it a festive sequel to Russell Brand’s comedy remake? Or has Arthur the Aardvark finally made it to the big screen? Or is it in fact a seasonal Aardman animation about a dysfunctional family on Christmas Eve who just so happen to be the Christmases – as in Father Christmas (though their surname is apparently interchangeable with Claus). It is the latter. The Christmas family, as you might expect, deliver presents to all the children in the world on Christmas Eve. This is done using highly advanced technology, not least of all a city-sized, sleigh-shaped spaceship. Unfortunately, despite all of the Christmas’s technical ingenuity, one child’s present fails to be delivered, so hapless youngest son Arthur takes it upon himself to get the gift to her himself.

The whole ‘how Santa does it’ theme has been visited regularly enough to almost be a genre in itself. Fred Claus, The Santa Clause films andThe Polar Express have all visited this idea and more recently Hop took a similar approach with the Easter bunny story (such as it is). As such, much of what should be inventive and amusing about the film falls a little flat. Arthur Christmas’s commando elves are akin to Hop’s commando rabbits and images of vast present production lines have been done before in The Polar Express to name two such instances. That said, the volume of fun ideas is such that for every miss, there is a hit – I laughed at the suggestion that the space-sleigh converts milk and cookies to biofuel, for example. Keep your eyes peeled for the hundreds of visual gags scattered throughout the film.

Whilst the film boasts an impressive array of British vocal talents – James McAvoy, Bill Nighy and Jim Broadbent head up a list of names often associated with British ensemble casts and are complemented by the likes of Hugh Laurie, Ashley Jensen and others – McAvoy as the titular character is often incredibly annoying. He whines, whinges and squawks, frequently repeating his inane blabbering ad nauseam. Fortunately the other characters are far less tedious. Nighy’s grouchy granddad, Jensen’s resourceful elf and Imelda Staunton’s composed Mrs Santa are all fun to watch.

On the whole, Arthur Christmas is a pretty enjoyable and often fairly funny adventure that should tide over younger viewers until at least New Year. The film is also witty enough and put together with a level of care and skill that should also satisfy – if not enthral – older viewers too. I’m concerned girls might not enjoy it as much as boys though; the film is a bit of a sausage fest. Whilst the idea of succession is one of the slightly more complex and interesting ideas the film plays with, what might have been more interesting still – and more importantly, fun – would have been to pursue the idea of a female Santa taking over the family business. If it’s now good enough for the Royals…