Kids and adults alike have been dudded these school holidays, most especially with the dumbed down, dulled down, in the doldrums Aardman animation THE PIRATES: BAND OF MISFITS!

Admires of Aardman most likely will be disappointed by this pipe and slippers take on what should have been a riotous, rambunctious, robust romp through the seven seas.

Instead we have a tedious time on tardy tides, a shipwreck of a show with a paucity of funny lines and a pace more akin to a sea slug. Director Peter Lord has lost his zest from Chicken Run 12 years back.

After a series of aborted booty attacks, the Pirate Captain boards the Beagle where Charles Darwin identifies the buccaneer’s bird as a dodo.

The credulous captain had always thought his pet a parrot but the biologist convinces him it is indeed the rare breed dodo, thought extinct, and that the pirate can plunder the plumage by presenting it to the Royal Historic Society and Queen Victoria.

Unfortunately, his scheme scuppers the skippers chance of winning the coveted Pirate of the Year award.

Based on Gideon Defoe’s book The Pirates! In an adventure with Scientists, the screenplay is written by the author but fails miserably to translate. Things that have been lost should have been kept, things added should not have been, and the direction is just slack, no winds in the sails at all. At 88 minutes it’s about 80 minutes too long.

Not a patch on Arthur Christmas, Chicken Run or Flushed Away

(c) Richard Cotter

10th April, 2012