{"id":10619,"date":"2012-04-16T09:00:23","date_gmt":"2012-04-16T08:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=10619"},"modified":"2013-05-31T16:21:24","modified_gmt":"2013-05-31T15:21:24","slug":"at-the-movies-the-pirates-in-an-adventure-with-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2012\/04\/16\/at-the-movies-the-pirates-in-an-adventure-with-scientists\/","title":{"rendered":"At The Movies: The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists!"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are a few things that I’ve decided are never going out of fashion: pirates and zombies. \u00a0They’re ubiquitous.\u00a0 They’re everywhere<\/em>.\u00a0 Everyone’s party either wants you to come as one or other or a mixture of the two, or wouldn’t mind if you did.\u00a0 This is no bad thing: zombies are obviously a reclamation of the middle-class stigmatisation of the working class as a shambling, faceless, flesh-eating horde, and pirates are …pirates.\u00a0 Who wouldn’t want to be a pirate?\u00a0 There’s loads<\/em> of stuff to like about pirates.\u00a0 The ships, the clothes, the beards and the array of innovative tropical sexually-acquired infections.\u00a0 Rum, sodomy and the lash. Anyone’s<\/em> idea of fun.<\/p>\n

***As is usual, dear readers, the BadRep pirate flag reading SPOILER WARNING – only mild to moderate this time, but still – is hereby hoisted here! ***<\/strong><\/p>\n

So,\u00a0Britain’s most beloved animation house, Aardman Animations<\/strong>, the cheerful cohort behind treasured characters Wallace & Gromit<\/strong> and my personal comfort-watchers Chicken Run<\/strong><\/a> and Rex The Runt<\/strong><\/a>, really can’t go wrong with a film entitled The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists<\/strong>.\u00a0 It’s adapted from Gideon Defoe’s<\/strong>\u00a0series<\/a> of childrens’ books of the same name and derivations thereof, one of which is called The Pirates! In An Adventure With Communists<\/strong>, and if that doesn’t make you deliriously excited, then I’m afraid we can’t be friends.\u00a0 I haven’t read them yet, but I’ve made arrangements to get them into my eager paws as soon as possible because how can I not?\u00a0 Pirates!\u00a0 Everyone likes pirates.<\/p>\n

It was the poster that drew my eye first.\u00a0 Witness:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

PIRATES!<\/em> it says.\u00a0 And there they are.\u00a0 There’s a nice representation of different genders, ages, ethnicities and beards on the poster, and I was all excited for a nice diverse film – the sort I tend to dream about.<\/p>\n

SHAME IT’S A LIE.<\/p>\n

Well, no, I’m exaggerating – it’s not quite a bare-faced man-churned fictivated sin-speech, but it’s pretty fallacious. \u00a0The main character is that chap in the middle there, the Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant<\/strong>). \u00a0The pirate to the left of him, Cutlass Liz – voiced by the brilliant\u00a0Salma Hayek<\/strong> – is an award-winning Pirate Of The Year, full of swash, buckle and plunder-power, and gets literally no screen-time in which she isn’t a sex object.<\/em> \u00a0Seriously.\u00a0 She turns up, wiggles, alludes to her piratical prowess and then… isn’t seen again!\u00a0 She has, like, three scenes!\u00a0 And one of them is in the dreams of the Pirate Captain where she’s all, “Ooh Pirate Captain, I am UNDONE”.<\/p>\n

The pirate to the right of said Pirate Captain in the poster goes by the moniker Suspiciously Curvaceous Pirate (they’re all “[Adjective] Pirate”). Voiced by Ashley Jensen<\/strong>, she’s a dragged-up pirate with an amazing false beard and a sweet Scottish chirp – who also gets very little screen-time or lines, and whose characterisation appears to revolve around the fact that she likes sparkly jewels, pastel colours and fancies the captain a bit.\u00a0 The humour of her character is almost exclusively that she’s a cross-dressing woman.\u00a0 Now, I’m never okay with boys in drag being sent up purely for being boys in drag, so why would I be okay with it if the character’s female?<\/p>\n

Not great, is it?<\/p>\n

That said, it’s not all bad news for lady characters in this, but from a rather unexpected source: the villain, voiced by the legendary Imelda Staunton<\/strong>, Queen\u00a0Victoria\u00a0(“Look at my crest! What does it say?\u00a0 I HATE PIRATES.”) is absolutely magnificent.\u00a0 She’s perfect.\u00a0 Stop making that face.\u00a0 This is the badassest Queen Vic you have ever<\/em> seen, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s possible to not fancy her even a little bit after the credits roll.\u00a0 She has a battle skirt<\/em> that clanks aside to reveal a) jodphurs and b) TWO KATANAS.\u00a0 Come on<\/em>. \u00a0How many other films have had Queen\u00a0Victoria\u00a0fighting pirates with katanas before getting vanquished by GCSE-classroom science?\u00a0 FUCKING ZERO.\u00a0 THIS IS A UNIQUE CINEMATOGRAPHICAL EXPERIENCE.<\/p>\n

OVERALL, the above issues aside, it’s a very funny film – the school of humour whereby if one joke doesn’t wash with you, never fear! there’ll be another one along in a tick – and it’s rich with classic Aardman background detail (the pirate ship has a fusebox, for example, and watch the faces of the taxidermy animals in Charles Darwin’s (David Tennant<\/strong>)\u00a0house during the bathtub chase scene!).\u00a0 Martin Freeman’s<\/strong> second-in-command pirate actually looks a bit like him, which is neatly appealing, and Brian Blessed’s<\/strong> megaphonic turn as the Pirate King is predictably godlike. \u00a0The dodo is gorgeously animated.\u00a0 I wish there’d been more scientists doing science-y things, but then I was imagining something dreadful involving shiny gloves, tailored labcoats and experimentation, and there are reasons I haven’t been allowed to make films for children and that’s one of them.<\/em><\/p>\n

But I did make a new poster, to give the neglected characters just a bit more attention. I made Cutlass Liz look a bit more badass, too, on account of her being badass and therefore deserving of a badass coat:<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
\nTHERE. <\/p>\n

YOU SHOULD SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:<\/h3>\n