If you ever enjoyed the Pirates of Penzance, you probably shouldn’t bother watching this movie. The Gilbert and Sullivan popular classic has been disassembled and stuck back together with some sort of pirate glue; a pirate glue that doesn’t stick half as well as it honks.
If the thought of star Christopher Atkins with waxed (and sunken) chest kerfluffing his way through some of the worst lines in history is your thing, I’m sorry to say it ain’t mine. Kristy McNichol plays the love interest and the lines she bounces back off him are just as bad.
See, it all starts when Frederick (Atkins) turns 21 and decides to destroy the pirates who made him an orphan, the very pirates who raised him from age one. The Pirate King (Ted Hamilton in a sorry state) doesn’t like the idea and so we have loggerheads. Add to this Mabel (McNichol), the youngest daughter of a modern Major General (Bill Kerr). She has 12 sisters who must all marry before she can marry Freddy. Now they've gotta find 12 other men (from where, I wonder?) to marry the sisters, discover the lost family treasure and have a big dance finale in less than 90 minutes. Can it be done? Try to stay awake finding out.
You may be mortified by the footage of Atkins barking at attackers, not once, but TWICE during this feature. I was. I have no idea what director Ken Annakin was thinking, but I would like to know what his actual job was.
The horrors of '80s fashion (now back ‘in’ again, I’m told) are gloriously displayed for everyone living up in the future to look back upon and laugh at for all eternity. Garry McDonald playing three roles can’t even save this sad tale, but the appearance of Maggie ‘The Freak’ Kirkpatrick is worth keeping an eye out for - even if she only has, like, four (bad) lines in the whole thing. Filmed entirely in Australia and utilising some of our greatest theatre restaurant actors, this film does little but embarrass the country that produced Moulin Rouge and the Matrix films 20 years later. The Pirate Movie reminds us that stageplays can either make an excellent transition to film (I give you Exhibit A: Chicago) or die in the ass (Exhibit B: The Pirate Movie).
One more thing: When watching this you may be tempted to count the cliches in dialogue or visuals. Go right ahead. Please email me if you manage to get above the 50 or so I got to before losing track. Highlighted cliches: Romantic horse riding in the surf, anytime a pirate acts ‘gay’ (several of these) and yes, even women undressing silhoutted before drawn shades. It’s as Kirsty McNicholl states midway: “These are the 18-80s.”
They sure are.
The picture is well transferred and is nice and clear, which is helpful for the opening sequence; reused footage from what I believe is Captain Blood, an old Errol Flynn film (please someone, correct me if I'm wrong). Colour is sharp and well defined, and details are easily seen, although this helps some of the pissier special effects stand out all the more glaringly.
Oh well.
The sound is quite nice with no noise to speak off, but the studio-recorded songs are easily picked out being imported into the existing soundtrack. The miming, though, is top-notch stuff. You can barely tell that they aren’t really singing to each other across a crowded recording lounge.
Occasionally you might have trouble making out what a character has said - I'm not sure whether to put this down to piss poor acting or piss poor original sound engineering, so let’s call it a little from both.
The musical score seems to have been compiled from various sources, remixed and then put in a hat and stuck together in the order which they were drawn. Oh, and the 'hit song' similarities to films like Grease and Xanadu are shameless.
This is only for completists, diehard fans or participants within the farce. I wouldn't recommend buying this DVD unless you were headed to a costume ball and needed some reference material or you were desperate for a laugh on a Saturday night with lots of friends and lots of booze.
