The Pirates! A Band of Misfits: A Barrel of British Satire!

Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Imelda Staunto star in The Pirates! A Band of Misfits. Courtesy of Sony Pictures

The most successful animated films have always found a way of entertaining both their younger target audience, as well as the taller folks accompanying them. This proved to be a challenge for the stop motion animation The Pirates! A Band of Misfits, which appeared to have little difficulty in entertaining the grown-ups, but fell short with keeping the children interested for the duration of the film.

The story centers on a blundering band of pirates, led by the inept The Pirate Captain (yes, that is actually his name), set out to snatch the highly coveted Pirate of the Year award from their rivals.

The cast is studded with recognisable voices, including Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Imelda Staunton, David Tennant, Jeremy Piven, Selma Hayek, Brian Blessed, Anton Yelchin, and Brendan Gleeson, to name a few. Not surprisingly, the actors handled the British humour with ease.

This welcome humour from across the ocean was provided by screenwriter and novelist, Gideon Defoe. His screenplay is littered with jokes for adults (not to be confused with adult jokes) that regrettably seemed to fly over the heads of the children in the audience.

Directors Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt, who have not directed anything in over a decade, succeeded, for the most part, in providing a lot of visual humour and entertainment for your toddlers. The audience never became restless watching the claylike characters’ wacky adventures.

As a comparison, The Pirates! A Band of Misfits falls somewhere between Chicken Run and Pirates of the Caribbean. If your children enjoyed either of those films, they’ll have a blast with this one.
Bottom Line: Parents, if you’re looking for a family friendly show that won’t put you to sleep, this movie willdo the trick.

Grade B-

Runtime 88 minutes
IMAX: No
3D: Yes

Safe: Entertainment value high for target audience

Jason Stathan stars in Safe, Courtesy of Alliance Atlantis

When Jason Statham’s name is attached to any project these days high expectations do not ensue. Unfortunately, his handling of similar cars through busy streets, kicking the snot out some stunt guy, has become overly predictable. His latest movie, Safe, gives you much of the same from this former Olympic diver turned Hollywood action star.

In Safe, Luke Wright (Statham) finds himself caught between the Chinese mafia, the Russian mafia and a corrupt police force when he tries to protect a gifted Asian girl who holds valuable information.

Exploding with clichés and shoddy acting, this movie offers a lot of high energy action cloaked in a half decent story.

Statham’s performance is exactly the same as every other movie he’s been in. He has, perhaps, the least amount of range a successful actor can or should have, but all his roles require are his physical presence, so expectations should always be kept low.

There is some gut wrenchingly awful acting from the young Catherine Chan, along with most of her foreign castmates.

However, the well shot and choreographed action really delivered what most will be expecting from this movie. Director and writer Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans) used welcomed variety of camera techniques, mixing steady camera and shaky camera to capture the combination of gun fights and hand to hand battles.

Bottom Line: If you’re a Statham fan, you’ll enjoy it. If you need an action fix, you’ll enjoy it too.

Grade C

Runtime 94 minutes
IMAX: No
3D: No