Sunday, January 13, 2008

Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything Movie

 

I used to think that the pirates who didn’t do anything, according to the song, just sat around all day: the epitome of laziness. But in this big screen veggie tale, the three vegetable pirates are good-hearted minimum pay service workers, with low self-esteem, who serve and clear tables at a dinner theater (about pirates), are taken back to the 17th century because a princess, who is captured by her evil peg-legged uncle wants his brother’s throne, finds what looks very much like a golden compass fulfilling the role of a kind-of crystal ball, orders up some heroes.

 

 

 

My six year-old nephew whispered to me that it reminded him of the "Pirates of the Caribbean", but he didn’t elaborate.

 

This film was very slow-going for almost 2/3 of the way through; both my nephews got involved once the evil cheese puffs showed up rather inexplicably and we stayed all through the credits so the kids could watch for them to reappear.

 

There are plenty of lessons from the Gospels in the film, but I was disappointed that it showed the audience how sea mines work to blow up designated ships. Argh, but this is the task of pirate movies, eh?

 

The animation is excellent and on a par with all the current feature animation films.

 

The kids talked about seeing it again, but I’ll forego that dubious pleasure. It’s a film for kids and Veggie Tale fans and can provide a lot to talk about from the perspective of character education – and fatherhood. But I think it called George (the #1 hero) a loser father too many times. So the script is a bottom-heavy  and I think has difficulty finding its sea-legs. All the action begins so late; the writer took too long to lay out the premise. (I did like it better than Bee Story, though; it lost me early on and never got me back…).

 

These are films for kids. I think grown-ups would like them to be for us, too. Some animated films like Ratatouille (that just won a Golden Globe!) achieve this, and some don’t. And that’s ok.

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