The Pirates! In an Adven­ture with Scientists

When dis­cussing the giants of 21^st cen­tu­ry ani­ma­tion, it’s easy to lose one­self between the twin poles of Pixar and Ghi­b­li. Though at oppo­site ends of the aes­thet­ic spec­trum (one, a gleam­ing mon­u­ment to tech­no mod­ernism; the oth­er, a hushed reminder of hand-craft­ed val­ues), their work nev­er­the­less shares an emo­tion­al poignan­cy and dra­mat­ic piquan­cy that has seen it ele­vat­ed above a crowd­ed field of pretenders.

Some­how we for­get that there’s a home­grown pow­er­house adding a British voice to the con­ver­sa­tion, squir­relled away in a sub­urb of Bris­tol. Aard­man Ani­ma­tions may go qui­et­ly about its busi­ness, yet its cre­ative process encap­su­lates both the shim­mer­ing CG wiz­ardry and time-hon­oured arti­san­ship of its Amer­i­can and Japan­ese rivals. But the unique ingre­di­ent? The real­ly spe­cial stuff? That’s the Britishness.

There may only have been three stop-motion fea­tures in the past 12 years, but each has been an exquis­ite­ly craft­ed jew­el. And if their lat­est, The Pirates! In an Adven­ture with Sci­en­tists, doesn’t quite reach the ver­tig­i­nous heights of Chick­en Run or Curse of the Were-Rab­bit, it still dis­plays a thumbprint of bril­liance. Effort­less­ly charm­ing, superbly per­formed and speck­led with that inim­itable island wit, Pirates! is gen­er­ous to the point of profli­ga­cy with in-jokes, sight gags and dizzy­ing­ly assem­bled details.What it lacks – crit­i­cal­ly if not fatal­ly – is focus.

The fault may lie with Gideon Defoe’s source mate­r­i­al. His series of nov­els, The Pirates! In an Adven­ture with… (Sci­en­tists, Com­mu­nists, Roman­tics, Moby Dick and Napoleon have all filled in the blank), are live­ly romps through a loose­ly imag­ined world of ersatz Vic­to­ri­ana. Light-heart­ed and sharply sketched, they are nev­er­the­less widescreen, episod­ic vignettes that demand a care­ful recal­i­bra­tion for the screen.

You can cer­tain­ly see the appeal for direc­tor Peter Lord. It’s not just that the sub­ject is in vogue; there’s a rich­ness to both the jer­ry-rigged world of Defoe’s imag­in­ing and the sun-dap­pled vis­tas of the film’s nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Caribbean milieu.

Lord has seized greed­i­ly on the chance to flex Aardman’s cre­ative mus­cles. Brine-soaked and bar­na­cle encrust­ed, Pirates! is eas­i­ly the studio’s most visu­al­ly extrav­a­gant effort to date, not to men­tion its first film in 3D, which, with­out mak­ing any appre­cia­ble dra­mat­ic impact, adds an extra lay­er of rich­ness to the breath­tak­ing scenery.

Whether it’s the pirate port of Blood Island (salty shacks, rum-drenched saloon, Napoleon Blownapart’s can­non shop); Vic­to­ri­an Lon­don (smog-shroud­ed docks, impos­ing Goth­ic facades, bob­bies with sand­wich­es under their hats); or the iron flag­ship of the Queen’s fleet (a belch­ing steam­punk vision of retro-futur­ism), Pirates! is a daz­zling spectacle.

Bestrid­ing this world like, well, not a colos­sus exact­ly – more a down-on-his-luck sea pup – is the Pirate Cap­tain (Hugh Grant). A ham-munch­ing, shan­ty-singing, lux­u­ri­ant­ly beard­ed would-be super­star, for two decades the Pirate Cap­tain has been frus­trat­ed in his quest to land top prize at the Pirate of the Year awards.

Through­out this extend­ed peri­od of per­son­al embar­rass­ment his crew, includ­ing Pirate with Scarf (Mar­tin Free­man), Sur­pris­ing­ly Cur­va­ceous Pirate (Ash­ley Jensen) and Pirate with Gout (Bren­dan Glee­son), have stuck loy­al­ly by him, bond­ed togeth­er by the twin riv­ets of week­ly ​‘Ham Nite’ and a shared affec­tion for the ship’s mas­cot, Pol­ly the parrot.

Just as the Pirate Captain’s lat­est bid for awards sea­son glo­ry seems des­tined to end in humil­i­a­tion, fate throws a curve ball in the shape of Charles Dar­win (David Ten­nant); a lit­tle-known sci­en­tist nurs­ing a secret crush and a chip on his shoulder.

In Pol­ly, Dar­win sees a chance to ingra­ti­ate him­self with the sci­en­tif­ic estab­lish­ment back in Lon­don; in ​‘Chuck’, the Pirate Cap­tain sees dou­bloon-signs, redemp­tion and the recog­ni­tion that has for so long elud­ed him. So it’s off to Lon­don, the Roy­al Soci­ety and the court of Queen Vic­to­ria (Imel­da Staunton), where the pirates will dis­cov­er that they aren’t the only ones well-versed in the dark arts of betrayal.

If that sounds as unlike­ly as it is con­vo­lut­ed, well, as the Pirate Cap­tain game­ly puts it, reflect­ing on the tri­als ahead: ​“It’s only impos­si­ble if you stop to think about it.”

So Lord doesn’t stop for a sec­ond – throw­ing in a ​‘man­panzee’, a secret soci­ety, cun­ning dis­guis­es, and a crack­ing set piece in Darwin’s Lon­don man­sion involv­ing a mon­key, a bath­tub, a stuffed ele­phant, a stolen par­rot and an East­er Island statue.

This is Pirates! at its fran­tic best – leav­ing you at once scratch­ing your head with won­der, and sim­ply shak­ing it in amazement.

Almost imper­cep­ti­bly, how­ev­er, the gigan­tic smile that the film has fixed to your face starts to fade. Lord grap­ples unsuc­cess­ful­ly with the book’s episod­ic nature, leav­ing his film big on tex­ture but short on struc­ture. Though it flits con­fi­dent­ly between geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions, it moves uncer­tain­ly between dra­mat­ic loci.

Every time you think it’s set a fixed course, the film lurch­es off in some new direc­tion. From the Pirate of the Year com­pe­ti­tion to Darwin’s duplic­i­ty; from Queen Victoria’s homi­ci­dal mania back to the Captain’s arch neme­sis Black Bel­lamy, audi­ences risk sea-sick­ness try­ing to keep up with Pirates!’s chop­py nar­ra­tive. In the midst of it all, the fate of a silent par­rot (pure MacGuf­fin though it may be) isn’t enough to keep our emo­tion­al engage­ment anchored.

Com­pared to, say, the life-and-death stakes of Chick­en Run, in which Mr and Mrs Tweedy pre­sent­ed a con­stant, sin­is­ter threat; or the unre­quit­ed roman­tic fris­son between Wal­lace and Lady Tot­ting­ton that ele­vat­ed the cli­max of Curse of the Were-Rab­bit, Pirates! feels both emo­tion­al­ly and dra­mat­i­cal­ly insubstantial.

But per­haps the most sur­pris­ing omis­sion is the short­age of any actu­al pirat­ing. Except for a sin­gle mon­tage played for laughs, there’s almost noth­ing in the way of main brace-splic­ing, can­non-fir­ing, Jol­ly Roger-rais­ing, high seas buc­ca­neer­ing. There’s lots of adven­tur­ing and plen­ty of sci­ence, but a touch more of the old-school cor­sair­ing wouldn’t have hurt.

And so (con­trary to the Pirate Captain’s instruc­tions) you do start to think about it. And some­thing unex­pect­ed hap­pens: Pirates! comes back into focus in a new light, as metaphor, as the point at which Aard­man has begun to reflect on itself. From a sneery mot­to above the gates of The Roy­al Soci­ety to the treach­ery of the roy­al court, Lord’s film is at its most pur­pose­ful when tak­ing aim at the Lon­don estab­lish­ment. Is that a coin­ci­dence, giv­en Aardman’s well-groomed rep­u­ta­tion as peren­ni­al out­siders, the lit­tle stu­dio that beat the world at a game it wasn’t even playing?

Like­wise, the Pirate of the Year show is a gaudy pas­tiche of the Oscars, one that trans­forms the Pirate Cap­tain from fail­ure (“We are rub­bish com­pared to them”) to suc­cess sto­ry – against a brash Amer­i­can com­peti­tor no less – but only at the cost of his soul.

Though Eng­lish to a tee in all oth­er respects, here Aard­man repu­di­ates both the demands of a show­busi­ness indus­try that prizes glit­ter­ing baubles over true crafts­man­ship, and that strain of chip-on-the-shoul­der nation­al defeatism that sees so many of our film­mak­ers (and enter­tain­ment pun­dits) kneel­ing at the feet of the Hol­ly­wood machine. Suc­cess, we learn, doesn’t mean com­pro­mis­ing who you are, it means mak­ing the most of what you’ve got – a les­son that Aard­man is well placed to impart.

Per­haps this is stretch­ing the sub­text of an 88-minute ani­mat­ed fea­ture, but then Aard­man is noth­ing if not mul­ti-lay­ered. And those rip-roar­ing sur­face plea­sures remain – the fre­net­ic imag­i­na­tion, the riotous adven­ture, the easy intel­li­gence and, per­haps most enjoy­able of all, a per­fect­ly cal­i­brat­ed per­for­mance by Hugh Grant, whose ram­bunc­tious enthu­si­asm for the pirate life is infectious.

Does Pirates! rank along­side Aardman’s pre­vi­ous work as one of the crown jew­els of British cin­e­ma? No, in fair­ness, not quite. For all its mul­ti­ple joys and man­i­fest charm, it lacks a final fris­son of mag­ic. Is it head and shoul­ders above the trudg­ing medi­oc­rity of the main­stream? And then some. It’s just that, as the Pirate with Scarf says, ​“Some­times, you can’t just say ​‘Arrr!’ and make every­thing better.”