Review: The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Though it's presented in 3D and will no doubt be marketed seven ways to Sunday, there's something at the core of The Pirates! Band of Misfits that's willfully, defiantly, wonderfully old-fashioned.

First, there are the pirates themselves, which are as much a part of movie history as film stock. These include many adaptations of Peter Pan and Treasure Island, and range from Errol Flynn in Captain Blood to Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Then there's the handmade, stop-motion animation, courtesy of director Peter Lord and Aardman Animations, the company that also brought us Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run.

Though the movie is gorgeously detailed and elaborate, it was actually built and manipulated, for the most part, by human hands.

Finally, there's the writing, by Gideon Defoe, who adapted his own novel. It contains an astonishingly high frequency of good one-liners and visual gags, probably several per minute, so that even if one flops, another one will be along in just a few seconds.

The story follows Pirate Captain (wonderfully voiced by Hugh Grant). He's a scourge of the high seas, famous for his well-kempt beard and for "Ham Night" on board his ship.

He's much loved by his crew, with names like: Pirate with a Scarf (voiced by Martin Freeman), Albino Pirate (Anton Yelchin), Pirate with Gout (Brendan Gleeson), and Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate (Ashley Jensen).

This year, Pirate Captain wants to win Pirate of the Year. Unfortunately, his skills at nabbing booty are a little soft. But fortunately, the answer to his prayers lays with his parrot, Polly, who turns out to be the last of the Dodo birds.

This is the kind of sly movie in which Charles Darwin (David Tennant) and Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) are the bad guys.

It's hard to emphasize enough just how intricate the movie is. No small touch is left out, from the funny newspapers and magazines the characters read to little strings of fat dribbling from a slice of ham.

Yet it's also warmly human movie, with characters so expressive you'll want to join the crew.

And, despite the onslaught of pirate humor, and the allusions to things like "grog" and sexy mermaids, the movie still has snagged a PG rating; these pirates are no more vulgar than Errol Flynn.

If The Pirates! catches on with kids who want to see it ten times or more, parents won't mind watching too.