The Pirates! Band of Misfits

The dodo and the dumbwaiter

Grade: B –

Director: Peter Lord

Starring the voices of: Hugh Grant, Brendan Gleeson, David Tennant, Martin Freeman and Imelda Staunton

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 27 min.

Aardman Animation’s unspoken kinship with the Monty Python legacy takes another step forward with their debut adaptation of Gideon Defoe’s The Pirates! book series, subtitled Band of Misfits. It’s an appropriate title since in the modern animation world of CG, 3-D and IMAX, Aardman’s comparatively quaint stop-motion technique—making its return to the big-screen after 2005’s Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit—feels like a stubborn outlier in a high-tech world (even though Band of Misfits also gets full the 3-D treatment).

Set in 1837, a middling marauder with a luxuriant beard and the rather mundane moniker of the Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant), harboring dreams of winning the coveted Pirates of the Year Award, sets sail to out-plunder his rivals. During one in a number of booty-less raids, he boards the Beagle and encounters a young Charles Darwin (David Tennant), drawn here as a sniveling, duplicitous glamor-seeker. Assisted by his chimp-servant Mr. Bobo, Darwin recognizes that the Pirate Captain’s purportedly rotund parrot Polly is really the last living dodo bird. Darwin convinces the Captain and his crew to sail for London to enter Polly into the Royal Society’s scientific discovery contest with the promise of a priceless prize for the winner.

There’s enough animated action here to keep kids interested, but just barely. Mostly, the chuckles skew more mature, including knowing references to Jane Austen, lepers and the Elephant Man (my hardiest guilty laugh). Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) is a bleating shrew with a distaste of buccaneers but an appetite for exotic cuisine.

Directed by Aardman co-founder Peter Lord (helming his first feature since Chicken Run), the set-up for Band of Misfits is like a send-up of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise peppered with references to 19^th century British pop culture. The result is amply witty, but it’s also a bit detached as times, lacking in narrative or comedic drive. The humor is so decidedly English that many quips will undoubtedly capsize on their way across the Atlantic—indeed, in the U.K. the film was released under the name The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists.

Still, backed by vibrant voice talent and CG enhancements to their distinctive visuals, Aardman has created another cheeky charmer. You’ll come for the pirates…you’ll stay for the sidelong discourse on natural selection.

Neil Morris

Anonymous

Elizabeth: The Olden Age

Grade: C +

Director: Roland Emmerich

Starring: Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Sebastian Armesto, Rafe Spall, David Thewlis, and Edward Hogg

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 10 min.

The ad tagline for Anonymous – “Was Shakespeare a Fraud?” – conveys both the substance and problem with this campy historical dramatization. Rehashing a decades-old conspiracy over the true author of the works attributed to actor and playwright William Shakespeare, director Roland Emmerich foists a distended viewpoint of the so-called Oxfordians, a vocal minority who argue that Edward de Vere, 17^th Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays and poems attributed to the Bard of Avon.

While Emmerich, the longtime doyen of bombastic end-of-the-world disaster flicks, might seem inapposite to such literary designs, the premise of “Anonymous” is no less absurd than 2012, Independence Day, or The Day After Tomorrow. Emmerich’s implicit contention is that the factual license and tawdry palace intrigue at the heart of this film is no different than the liberties Shakespeare (or whoever) took with historical events for the sake of such seminal dramas as Henry VIII, Richard III, and Julius Caesar. Emmerich establishes his perspective in Anonymous’ opening scene, when Derek Jacobi steps onto a contemporary stage to deliver a prologue as actors busy themselves behind the curtain to launch the rest of the story. [It’s ironic – and a bit sad – to see Jacobi, who owes much of his acting career to the Bard, smear Shakespeare’s name by claiming he never advanced beyond a grade school education and asking, “What if I told you that Shakespeare never wrote a single word?”]

In truth, historical slavishness should not be art’s critique. The problem, of course, is that while Shakespeare regales us with the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V and Marc Antony’s eulogy in Julius Caesar, Emmerich and screenwriter John Orloff (A Mighty Heart) has Edward de Vere (Rhys Ifans) whining that “I’d go mad if I didn’t write down the voices.”

Because of his royal station and proper society’s taboo against writers, de Vere keeps his predilection secret. He also recruits playwright Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armesto) to publish de Vere’s works under Jonson’s name. However, the audience’s exhortation following the debut of Henry V impulsively prompts William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall), a middling actor and cad, to dip his fingers in ink and take a bow. The rest is Emmerich’s version of history.

Emmerich’s branding of Shakespeare as an illiterate commoner not worthy or capable of penning words that could only have been wrought by aristocracy is elitist enough. However, the true transgression of Anonymous is not its shaky verisimilitude but the convoluted vehicle is uses to tell its kitschy tale. Shakespeare’s emergence takes place against the backdrop of a power struggle over the court of Queen Elizabeth I (played in her later years by Vanessa Redgrave). De Vere’s true motivation for revealing his plays to the public is the subtle promotion of Robert Devereux (Sam Reid) as Elizabeth’s would-be successor in lieu of a candidate preferred by the queen’s ministers, William Cecil (David Thewlis) and, after William’s death, his hunchback son Robert (Edward Hogg).

De Vere, whose relationship with Elizabeth figures prominently, is portrayed by three different actors as the film oscillates across as many time periods. There are betrayals, blackmails, intricate plots, illegitimacy, incest and even a bit of bear-baiting for good measure. Monitoring who is friend or foe is difficult enough – keeping track of their machinations proves an exercise in futility.

The costumes and computer-enhanced rendering of 16^th-century London are suitably realistic – the opulence is lavish, and at times you can practically smell the grim. However, Anonymous reaches its zenith during Emmerich’s productions of Shakespeare’s plays – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo & Juliet, Twelfth Night – using actors that include Royal Shakespeare Company veteran Mark Rylance. These brief glimpses ably capture the beauty and grandeur of Shakespeare in a way that, ironically, makes any debate over his identity feel trivial by comparison. Shakespeare belongs to the ages; Anonymous belongs in a tabloid.

Neil Morris

Sherlock Holmes

Robert Downey recreates that time he
broke into his neighbor's house.

Grade: B

Director: Guy Ritchie

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Strong, and Eddie Marsan

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hour, 8 minutes

Guy Ritchie’s kinetic update might not be “your father’s Sherlock Holmes,” but it’s a lot closer to your great-great grandfather’s. The reimagining of Holmes actually took place throughout the 20^th century on film and television with Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett’s beloved portrayals of Holmes as an over-mannerly sleuth in the Masterpiece Theater mold.

While Ritchie’s frenzied filmmaking style is strictly mod, his Sherlock Holmes is patterned more after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s complex, flawed literary incarnation. As narrated by his partner and friend Dr. John Watson, Holmes is an intellectual eccentric with a massive ego, eager to foil his criminal prey but mistrusting of the police. He is a skilled bare-knuckle brawling, has significant vices, including cocaine and morphine addictions, and possibly suffers from Bipolar disorder.

These traits inform Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, ably played by Robert Downey Jr., although the film does not dwell on Holmes’ dark side. Still, it is replete with Downey’s trademark idiosyncrasies – at this point, it is difficult to decide whether Downey’s personal travails inform his performances or merely steer his choice of roles. Regardless, his breezy Holmes keeps matters light and captivating throughout the film’s many saggy spots.

Set in London of 1891, the film’s original story opens with Holmes and Watson (Jude Law) apprehending the murderous, mystical Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), then later scrambling to track him down again after he apparently uses his knowledge of the black arts to rise from the dead and reanimate a secret society bent on world domination, called the Temple of the Four Orders.

Along the way, Holmes is reacquainted with Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), an American grifter described – as in Conan Doyle’s books – as the only woman to outwit and, thereby, intrigue Holmes. While Adler’s appearance is a welcome nod the Holmes canon, Downey and McAdams share bare-bones onscreen chemistry.

On the other hand, the film’s most layered relationship is the bromance between Holmes and Watson, who Law portrays not as Nigel Bruce’s bumbling oaf, but as a curious, capable companion who has aspirations of his own – including impending nuptials to Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly) that Holmes aims to thwart. In Holmes, the buttoned-down Dr. Watson finds an outlet to quench his thrill-seeking thirst instead of his own dormant gambling addiction, while Holmes placates Watson’s nascent deductive abilities because he values the presence of his loyal ally.

While not an origin story, Sherlock Holmes borrows narrative elements from Batman Begins, including setting the stage for revealing the hero’s definitive foe in the inevitable sequel – here, it is a faceless Professor Moriarty. However, when Holmes begins to squat and hallucinate in the middle of pentagrams and deciphering ancient spells and map patterns to predict where the killer will strike next, the script devolves into a Victorian-era version of The Da Vinci Code.

Still, when Holmes finally provides the obligatory “big reveal” during a fight atop the still-under construction Tower Bridge, there isn’t a corresponding “big cheat”; rather, most of the answers have been in front of you all along. While the film’s coda feels perfunctory and Ritchie’s editing is choppy at best, it is small distraction from Downey’s humorous, spot-on performance, Law’s capable supporting turn, and Ritchie’s manic, steampunk rendering of 19^th century London. No, this isn’t your father’s Sherlock Holmes. Thankfully, it’s elementary that it might be your kids’.

Neil Morris

The Bank Job

Ocean's Across the Pond

Grade: B
Director: Roger Donaldson
Starring: Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Steven Campbell Moore, Daniel Mays, Peter De Jersey, David Suchet, and Richard Lintern
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes

While fairly conventional as far as heist films go, the distinctive aspects of The Bank Job are both its footing in fact and an embrace of milieu, parlaying the infamous 1971 looting of the safe deposit box vault inside Lloyds in London’s Baker Street into a far-reaching dramatization that embroils petty thieves, hippies, Black radicals, Soho porno producers, gangsters, corrupt cops, politicians, the Notting Hill liberal elite, and even the Royal Family. It is the sort of English class-divide whimsy one might expect from Stephen Frears. Still, Aussie director Roger Donaldson (No Way Out; Thirteen Days) knows how to churn out a procedural corker, and he spices this Cockney caper with just the right amount of Guy Ritchie and Sexy Beast verve to keep up the hip quotient.

In September of 1971, reports of a bank robbery hit the front pages of London papers for several days before a government gang order, or D-Notice, was reportedly imposed to prevent further coverage. Evidence and investigation reports of the robbery were sealed and the perpetrators were never arrested or prosecuted. Claiming the cooperation of a “deep throat” informant involved with the original investigation, screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais reconstruct their version of the events surrounding the robbery, primarily their contention that the contents of some of the safe deposit boxes prompted the crime and ultimately led to the D-Notice.

In truth, the shroud of mystery surrounding the real-life robbery allows the filmmakers leeway to take unbridled dramatic license in revealing the untold “truth.” Here, the significant booty in question comprises compromising sexual photographs of various MPs and even Princess Margaret, held under lock and key by Black revolutionary and slum lord Michael X (Peter De Jersey) to use as blackmail. Sought by MI5 and MI6, an intelligence agent (Richard Lintern) solicits the assistance of small-time drug smuggler Martine Love (Saffron Burrows) to gather a cadre of crooks willing to break into the bank’s vault, pinch the photos, and make off with any other treasure trove they find. Jason Statham headlines the relatively little-known cast, bringing to bear his trademark jut-jawed masculinity and droll wit to Terry Leather, a small-time car dealer and hood who heads the robbers. The happily married Terry’s romantic past with Martine supplies the script with a delectable layer of sexual tension.

The film’s final act is as frenzied as it is far-fetched. However, given the matter-of-fact way Donaldson presents the caper, coupled with the vaporization of any trace of the heist in the media and official record, an outlandish explanation of the robbery’s motives and aftermath is, ironically, the kind that makes the most sense.

Neil Morris