Arr, me hearties! Pirates! Band of Misfits is a treasure

For years, Aardman films have always made me uncomfortable, ever since I realised that Wallace and Gromit, the franchise for which the Plasticine puppeteers are best loved, didn't make me laugh.

I hate that feeling of not getting a joke and, as a result, I'm always relieved when the Bristol-based company releases one of its non-W&G feature films, particularly as over the past decade the standard has been on a pleasingly upward rise.

Both Chicken Run and Flushed Away were good, while Arthur Christmas was outstanding. And now along comes The Pirates! and I'm pleased to report that this is the best yet: by King Neptune's briny pants, as the Pirate Captain would bellow, this is top-class family fare. Arr, me hearties! and all that piratical stuff.

Based on Gideon Defoe's children's book of the same name, its comic tone becomes evident from the moment a rotund Queen Victoria, voiced with relish by Imelda Staunton, switches in a bipolar moment from benign Monarch to murderous despot at the first mention of the p-word .

"What does it say on my Royal crest?" she thunders: "I ... hate ... pirates!"

That's typical of what turns out to be an exuberantly silly film. It's directed by Peter Lord, who set up Aardman in the early Seventies with David Sproxton and who was making stop-motion animation films for television a good decade before Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park joined the company in 1985.

But Lord has not been overshadowed by his better-known colleague: he co-directed Aardman's first feature film, Chicken Run; co-wrote Flushed Away, and now brings a hugely enjoyable mix of creativity and commercial comedy to The Pirates!

The gag count is far higher than we're used to from Aardman, with the animators adding layer upon layer to the humour already provided by Defoe's own screenplay.

One minute you're laughing at a line about Blood Island — so-called because it's the same shape as some blood — the next you're chuckling because you've just noticed that one of the pirates has a Blue Peter badge.

This is the sort of film that gets ten good laughs in before the opening titles where a lesser picture might struggle for two. Indeed, the sheer abundance of the visual humour is reminiscent of early Shrek.

As for the screenplay, there's more than a hint of Richard Curtis and Ben Elton's Blackadder about it, with the Pirate Captain, voiced by Hugh Grant, commanding his crew to "fire ... er, those long pointy things that go bang".

Thank heavens his First Mate, voiced by Martin Freeman, knows what he means. Fire the cannons, he translates.

Pirates, however, doesn't have the cruelty of Blackadder; with the exception of the murderous Monarch, it's a warmer production. The Pirate Captain may be proud of his luxuriant beard and ham-slicing talents but he's not very good at pirating and doesn't stand a chance of winning the Pirate of the Year competition.

Captain's rivals

When he boards a ship in search of gold, he's far more likely to find that it's carrying the plague or schoolchildren on a geography field trip than treasure. Nevertheless, his crew adore him, particularly Strangely Curvaceous Pirate, voiced by Ashley Jensen, and the ship's parrot Polly.

At times, the story is a little too eccentric for its own good. Having dedicated one impressive and funny scene to establishing the Pirate Captain's rivals such as Black Bellamy, Cutlass Liz and Peg Leg Hastings — voiced by Jeremy Piven, Salma Hayek and Lenny Henry respectively — the story forgets about them.

Instead, the Pirate Captain and his crew set sail for London after the newly captured Charles Darwin — on the verge of walking the plank, never getting a girlfriend, let alone establishing his theory of evolution — reveals that Polly is really a dodo and could win them a scientific prize.

The voice performances, however, make up for any slight drifting of plot.

Grant, sounding like a man who's rediscovered his enthusiasm for filmmaking, brings character and comedy to the central role, while there's excellent support from Staunton and Freeman, David Tennant as Charles Darwin and, inevitably, from that master of high-decibel acting, Brian Blessed, cast almost perfectly here as Pirate King. Pretty much a family must for the Easter holidays.

Don't miss it

The Pirates! is released in cinemas across the UAE Thursday.