The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists Review

Aardman have once again proven that they deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Pixar when it comes to big screen animation with their brilliantly bonkers new film, The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists. Its release date just ahead of the Easter holidays may indicate its status as great entertainment for younger audiences but any film featuring a barking mad Queen Victoria as the main villain and a traitorous Charles Darwin clearly has its eyes set on the more mature viewers too.

A terrific Hugh Grant plays the noble Pirate Captain who’s not very good at amassing huge quantities of bounty but with the help of his loyal crew, he sets out to win the annual ‘pirate of the year’ competition. His quest takes him to Victorian London where he encounters the aforementioned Queen Victoria, who just so happens to have a vendetta against pirates.  What follows involves endless sight gags, a case of avian mistaken identity and the best soundtrack of any ‘family’ film likely to be released this year.

Joining grant on the voice cast is a veritable who’s who of British acting talent, plus a few Hollywood stars thrown in for good measure (Jeremy Piven, Salma Hayek). After their hugely successful foray into CGI animation with Arthur Christmas, Aardman return to the incredibly labour intensive stop motion that they became famous for and as you’d expect it has wit and charm to spare. This time they’ve also expertly utilised 3D and it lends itself brilliantly to this style of animation. When the end credits feature more gags than most normal films manage in their entire runtime, you know there’s some amazing talent at work.

[embed width=550]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggb3zeZpibg[/embed]