The Pirates! Band of Misfits

The movie is a curiosity cabinet of visual pleasures but so breezy and lightly funny that you may not realize at first how good it is.

The lunacy begins early in The Pirates! Band of Misfits and never lets up.

A delightful romp whose varied pleasures should please kids all along the age spectrum.

The movie could also teach something to the makers of "Pirates of the Caribbean" about delivering a story quirky enough to actually stick with you.

Suffused with satire, wit, and the dry, tongue-in-cheek flavor of comedy one rarely finds in American productions, this stop-motion animated excursion pokes fun at pirate conventions while representing icons Queen Victoria and Charles Darwin as a bitch and a twit, respectively.

The movie is missing the zippy chases and lovable characters of Aardman studio's previous films ("Arthur Christmas," "Chicken Run").

What you won't find amid the clashing cutlasses and flashing foils, however, is anything resembling a rapier wit.

Aarr! Aardman gets back to it's house recipe: stopmotion. Now showing the relentless efforts of a bunch of varmints and his captain for being recognized "the pirate of the year". Humor a-la Monty Phyton, cultural references and historical characters makes it works as a short feature of Wallace & Gromit.

The Visuals Are Charming As Well As Everything Else In The Movie.. I Have To Bring My Score Down From A 8 To A 6 Because The Voice's Are Really Bad... I Think Everyone Wanted This To Be Bigger And Better... Sadly I Really Wanted Alot More... Still Not A Bad Movie... 60%

It's a fun movie overall, mocking certain elements of British society - the stuffed-shirts, mainly. Loyalty and ambition are two themes that run through the movie.

Just to begin on a lighter note, the map travel animations were mildly amusing, at best. With that behind us, take away Peter Pan

Rolling up to the theater, I realized at the time that the Avengers still wasn't out yet. Oh well, I thought, brimming with cheer on a warm Saturday afternoon, I can always watch "The Pirates! Band of Misfits", after all, I really liked their previous work. How wrong I was. This movie is utterly boring and camp. If you take your children to see this, you will be bored. None of the animation was interesting, and no jokes were funny. All of the jokes are childish and ridiculous slapstick and, the worst of all, telegraphed puns. "Pirates! Band of Misfits" is not surprisingly funny like "Arthur Christmas" was, or genuinely funny or heartfelt like many of the "Wallace and Gromit" films. This film is frustratingly and soul-grindingly long.