The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Directed by Peter Lord

(PG)

***

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It’s so refreshing to come across an animated movie fueled by “droll wit” instead of bathroom humor, said Claudia Puig in USA Today. Aardman Animations, the creators of Wallace & Gromit, have become dependable providers of “delightfully daffy” romps that play to all ages, and they haven’t lost their footing by staging their latest stop-motion animated comedy on the high seas. The story is about nothing more than a pirate captain’s low-odds bid to win “pirate-of-the-year” honors, but that’s all the creators need “to put all the characters, sets, and jokes into meticulous, whirring motion,” said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. Hugh Grant voices the protagonist “with verve and great timing,” yet has to compete for attention with a villainous Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin’s chimpanzee manservant, and 3-D effects that make all the figures fairly pop off the screen. “What you don’t have,” really, “is a lot of laughs,” said Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel. The weakest Aardman films are still “richer and more rewarding” than most children’s fare, but this may be the first in which the best gags “amount to a grin,” not hilarity.