Friday 13 July 2012

The Pirates! Band Of Misfits Review

Directed by Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt, and starring the voices of Hugh Grant, Brendan Gleeson and Martin Freeman, Pirates is a stop-motion film, which follows the story of the Pirate Captain who sets out to win the 'Pirate of the year' award. 

Growing up in Bristol, the home of Aardaman animations studios, has meant that for every new Aardaman release, their have been floods of people flocking to their nearest cinema to see some local film making. This film continued the tradition and in classic Aardaman form, delivered another hilarious animation, to be proud of. Pirates is debateably the funniest release of theirs yet, packing in plenty of clever jokes as-well as literally hundreds of visual gags. However the brilliance of this is that these jokes aren't just for kids, the balance is just right that, kids will be laughing at the actions and personalities of the characters while the adults will be laughing at the clever dialouge . The visuals are brilliant, but not in the awe-inspiring way you may think. Since all the sets in the film are made on a very small scale, and all the characters and their expressions are made using only clay, you can clearly see the effort that's gone into this film, and to see such a detailed and creative world on such a small scale is amazing. The characters are enticing and interesting, each one delivering a fresh view on every situation, creating even more comedy situations, however this positive point does bring up a few issues... 

Their were so many characters that it was almost inevitable that not all of them would get a full 'run out' and character development. This is exactly what happens and your left thinking, i would've really liked to know more about that character, which in a way you can't really blame the production team for. With every minute of filming taking a pain-staking, back-aching time of carefully modelling each character, this is a very time consuming process, so to ask them to create even 10 minutes worth of extra footage would take hours. This coincidentally affects the running time of the film and the pace at which the film is shot. 

Overall however it's a brilliant piece of harmless fun and comedy for both children and adults to enjoy. It does have it's faults but none that you wouldn't expect from a film which takes such effort and dedication to complete. 

80%- Aardman deliver yet another heart-warming comedy for the whole family to enjoy.

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