[Inspector Abberline]

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists.(2012)

Its hard not to like an Aardman Animation film, its even harder when you have Tenpole Tudor ,Supergrass and The Clash on its soundtrack and a rather funny Elephant man joke. Of course the film is littered with silly little in jokes and homages. It goes without saying that the animation is of the highest order like any of the Aardman films, and the standard of model making is wonderfully elaborate and some of the detail is truly stunning especially if your are watching it on Blu-ray, the degree of fine detail you see down to the very last nut and bolt on the Queen Victoria's QV1 ship is incredible. The story concerns Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant),who is trying to win the Pirate of the Year competition but due to being a bit rubbish at being a pirate he never seems to win. Even with the best animated movies the main thing is the voice acting, and again its of the highest order, Hugh Grant who probably isn't what I would call the most diverse actor in the world, does a great job as the voice of the Pirate Captain, sounding remarkably like Hugh Laurie from Blackadder the Third, which is not such a bad thing as the whole film feels like animated version of an episode of Blackadder with the humour very much in that ilk. Other great voice acting comes from Martin Freeman as the Captain's number two, plus Brendan Gleeson, Ashley Jensen and Brian Blessed are all great as assorted characters. But probably my favourite character is David Tennant as Charles Darwin, brilliantly voice acted and fits perfectly with animated character who sort looks a little like a chubby Tenant any ways, along with Darwin is his sidekick Mr. Bobo a chimpanzee come butler. What can make or break any animated film is how well the characters work, and there is some really great scenes between the Captain Pirate and his parrot Polly ,who is actually the last living Do Do and this is where a large part of the films humour comes from between Polly and the Captain, especially when the Captain presents Polly at the Scientist of the Year competition. Although this had come out in 2012,it has taken me awhile to actually get around to watching it properly, I had partially caught it on television previously, but this is the first time I had watched it in full, the blu ray is excellent although lacking in any substantial extra's, the actual film it self looks amazing, highly recommended.