There is nothing to beat the Aardmans' animation and this outing for a cast of colourful characters is no different. Musical choices are oddly tied to the play-on-words that dogs the story arc however. The story does not work as a film. It might work as a read-to-child picture story book as a lot of the humour is actually of a word-play type. You need to be a competent reader to see the signs, and if you're a child the film will have moved on before you've caught up with the background clues. 3D is applied very unevenly and adds nothing visually - in fact, just showing the lack of engagement with the characters that occurs. Its a shame that the choice of actor voices means that this feels like a derivative film - Martin Freeman reprising his The Office role but on a pirate ship, for example. I wanted to like this film far more than I actually did and this is all down to the story arc failing to create and work up any tension. It would have been far better not to have allowed the Pirate Captain to know that he was grossly incompetent right from the start, and surely something funnier could have been done with the 'strangely shapely' pirate? Loved the docile-cat-like Dodo though!
Review of The Pirates! Band of Misfits
