Stars: Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, Imelda Staunton, David Tennant, Jeremy Piven, Salma Hayek
Directors: Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars
It's hard to believe, but The Simpsons Movie, Tangled, and Despicable Me have all been skipped over for an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature. Huge hits, received well critically, and all managed to be the surprise Oscar snub of the nomination morning for the animators. Since its inception roughly eleven years ago, the Animated Feature category has run the gamut from highly predictable winners (Pixar has taken the trophy an astounding six times and could well be headed to a seventh trophy) to some really out-there and off-the-wall sort of nominations (everything from The Secret of Kells and The Illusionist to Surf's Up).It's difficult to say if it was Rise of the Guardians, Le Tableau, or Hotel Transylvania who was more disappointed on Oscar nomination morning (there's an argument to be made for any of the three being the sixth place choice), but you can tell that Peter Lord was the happiest of the five nominees. While Brave, ParaNorman, Frankenweenie, and Wreck-It Ralph all seemed like sure bets, Pirates was a film that sailed in and conquered without so much as a hello. Sure, it's from now three-time Oscar nominee Peter Lord, whose film Chicken Run (along with The Iron Giant and South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut are likely the reasons that there is an animated race to begin with), but the film didn't do well at the Box Office domestically (not compared with its competition, at least), and so I figured it would be lost in the shuffle. That it didn't speaks to Lord's ability with the Academy, and the eclectic nature of this category and its short history.
Of course, one of my favorite parts of the OVP is the random outlier nominations, and so I invested into this film with relish (I've been consistently critical of this category as it doesn't have the same sort of "need" that Foreign Film or Documentary does, but the more I watch the nominated films, there have been several films that I am glad are able to be called Oscar-nominated). The film is a silly tale, but still an enjoyable one, about the Pirate Captain (either the writers got lazy on that one or this is some British humour I just didn't get), voiced by Hugh Grant, who desperately wants to win his long sought after goal of the Pirate of the Year Award. The problem for the bumbling Captain is that he consistently finds himself in attack situations that yield little booty, and so therefore he always loses to flashier pirates like Cutlass Liz (Hayek) and Black Bellamy (Piven).
(Spoilers ahead) However, upon what seems like a routine attack, he manages to come across Charles Darwin's The Beagle, and Darwin discovers that the Captain's "parrot" Polly is in fact an extinct dodo bird, and wants to take it to England to win a prize from his crush, Queen Victoria (historical accuracy takes a sound beating throughout the movie). The dodo wins the award for the Captain, but the prize is just an audience with the Queen, who discovers that the Captain is a pirate, and tries to trick the Captain into giving her the dodo bird. She finally succeeds in getting the bird by offering the Captain a pile of gold and jewels.
Here's where the plot gets a little bit more complicated and occasionally insane. The Captain sells the dodo bird to the Queen for her petting zoo, goes out and does win his award, only to have it taken away once it is revealed that he was in cahoots with the Queen, and he finally sets off to find his beloved Polly, only to discover that the goal is not to have the dodo for the petting zoo, but to eat it (she has a thing for eating rare and exotic animals). The Captain, of course, rescues his Polly and is given back his reward after the Queen adds a bounty to his head, and they sail off into the seven seas.
The film is full of delightful visual gags, as is the Peter Lord way-everything from the characters interacting with the drawings on maps to the persistent costume changes of the Pirates. I found the film lacked quite a bit in the final third, where the Queen inexplicably is more like a barking mad Queen of Hearts than anything resembling reality, and you sort of wonder what the point of mixing and matching history was. Also, the whole "pirates-not-having-any-names" bit started to strain after a while, and I did wonder why they introduced such captivating side characters like Cutlass Liz and Black Bellamy and then did little to nothing with them (except to perhaps fuel future sequels, which is never a good reason for a character). All-in-all, a fun, if slightly underwhelming movie from an animation genius.
And what did you think of Pirates? I have now completed the nominated animated films of 2012, and while the write-up will happen when I have seen all of the nominees from 2012 (only six more to go, including two we'll be visiting in the next week), I will definitely pose the two most obvious questions: did Pirates deserve to take out fare like Hotel Transyvlania, Rise of the Guardians, and the GKids batch of films, and which of the five nominated films will and should win the Oscar in a few weeks?
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