The Pirates: Band of Misfits

PG is a rating (Parental Guidance for rude humor and mild violence) that relies on parents to provide common sense. The audience yesterday included a couple of two-year-old toddlers whose attention spans were equal to a pair of goldfish! One started crying because she was bored, then started screaming in the lobby because she didn't want to leave, so they came back in. The little boy was playing hide-and-go-seek in the rows (this was an early afternoon screening with very few people in the audience), but his dad wanted to stay long enough to see the happy ending.

And those were the highlights!

Despite the much-lauded voice skills of Hugh Grant, Imelda Staunton, David Tennant, Jeremy Piven, Salma Hayek, Al Roker, Anton Yelchin and Brendan Gleeson, I found this to be garbled, a little too adult, and con- fusing. By "too adult" I mean most of the dialogue went over the heads of the children ("brine-soaked rapscallion") and the characters' names were strictly for adults: along with Charles Darwin and Queen Victoria, we have Albino Pirate, The Pirate with Gout, The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate, The Pirate Who Likes Sunsets and Kittens, The Pirate With a Scarf, etc., etc., etc.

Claymation movies are always impressive because so much can be done by the artists who create them. But for me, I have to disagree with other reviewers (and ten year olds) who loved this one...

Aarghhh!

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Here's a sample in a trailer:
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1389403161/
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By the way, the name of this movie is really "The Pirates! Band of Misfits" but Google doesn't like some punctuation marks in titles!