"Ladies and Gentlemen, please put your hands
    together... for the Pirate Captain!"
 

    The Pirate Captain and his mottled, makeshift crew of would-be plunderers from
    "The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!" return in their very own chat show!

    In the course of this scabrous production, the Pirate Captain answers some of
    our more pressing piratical questions, the Pirate With a Scarf goes treasure-hunting,
    Charles Darwin feels a bit windy, the Pirate With Gout cooks up a squidilicious
    meal, and the Pirate King gets rather shouty...

    "So You Want to be a Pirate!" is presented within a fab televised environment
    that's a crafty blend of ship's deck, theatre and studio. It's all filmed "live", and it's
    great barnacled fun. The tone, the inanity of the interviews, the Pirate Captain's
    asides and the VTs ape the chat show format perfectly, there's an in-house band
    segueing everything together, and we even get one of those "earnest" segments,
    in which we're shown the debilitating effects of lubbermatosis. Aardman stage
    everything superbly, and Gideon Defoe, who wrote the original Pirates! books
    and the screenplay for the Aardman feature, gives his lovable characters a
    barrel-load of absurdity to contend with, so this silly show continues where
    "The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!" left off. There's Monty Python
    in there, and plenty of Pratchett, blended with Gideon's own hysterical historical
    eccentricity. Frankly, if you like the Pirates! movie, and you get what they're
    about, then you'll love this spoof.

    That said, those coming cold to the characters may find themselves just a
    little codswalloped and confused by it all. "So You Want to be a Pirate!"
    assumes you are already familiar with the crew and the general oddity of
    the whole Pirates! scenario and its mashing up of anachronistic history
    and nonsense. In the UK, that imbalance has been heightened by the
    fact that this short film has been released independently of the main feature,
    on DVD, where the rest of the world has received it as a DVD extra. But then,
    we're in Aardman land, and "The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists!"
    had a pretty good theatrical run over here.

    "Is this you? - My Mum had a beard like yours!"

    The Pirates! are animated Marmite, aren't they? - Or indeed, they're rather like
    Danny Boyle's Olympics ceremony in that they either click with you, or they don't.
    This viewer loved them 'lympics and he loves these limpet-encrusted loons.
    There's something spectacularly daft and self-deprecating British about the
    Pirate Captain and company, and they've slotted in ber-rilliantly alongside
    Wallace and Gromit and the gang, down in Bristol...     

 

    "Hello to Jason Isaacs"

    Pause the film at around the 14.46 mark, and you'll spy some rather jolly
    hidden detail. There upon a crate, on a shelf, in the background of the galley
    set, just as the colossal squid breaks free, someone's stamped the phrase
    "Hello to Jason Isaacs". And that's a line with a little history behind it.

    Jason Isaacs is a stage and screen actor, perhaps best known for his role as
    Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies. He also happens to have gone to the
    same school as the well-known British film critic Mark Kermode. And for a joke,
    a few years back, Mark and his radio presenter pal Simon Mayo decided to
    say "hello" to Jason, whilst on air together. The whole thing snowballed, and
    since then a raft of famous film stars, film makers, musicians, commentators
    and presenters have shoehorned greetings of their own into various interviews,
    live reports and broadcasts, including a giant of the American chat show scene,
    in the form of Jay Leno.

    Now, on top of this, we must also add the fact that Mark Kermode features in
    an annual segment on the BBC's "Culture Show" in which he hands out his own
    alternative film awards in the shape of the Kermode Awards. And Aardman have
    triumphed here, with Mark previously heaping praise upon "Curse of the
    Were-Rabbit". He is a notable fan. Thus we get a teeny-tiny bit of hidden
    detail here, with a whole lot of history behind it!
       
 

   More detail to shout about...

    Aardman love to shoehorn lots of hidden detail into their films, and Toonhound
    likes nothing more than to track it all down (see here, and here). So now we've
    started, we'd better continue and list some more of the sly stuff you can find in
    this mad mini movie. Get your pause button ready...

    Premiere info

  

     On the web


     The Pirates!
     Sony's theatrical site...

     Aardman
     The studio's web site...

     Gideon Defoe
     The author's home...