Pirates! Band of Misfits

Pay no attention to the generic, dumbed-down-for-Americans title or the trailers that offer the flimsy story of a captain angling for the Pirate of the Year award. Pirates! Band of Misfits (known as The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists) is the latest sublime adventure from the endlessly mischievous gang at Aardman Animation, once again beautifully animated with stop-motion and crammed so tightly full of jokes and pratfalls that a dead simple plot is pretty much all there's room for. The goofy energy ought to appeal to the silly side of every age group, but with Charles Darwin and Queen Victoria as major characters and cameos from The Elephant Man and Jane Austen, there's also surprising amount of historical texture for something so nutty.

Even the choices of voice actors feel just oddball enough to be perfect, starting with dapper Hugh Grant as the luxuriant-bearded, not particularly successful Pirate Captain, then extending to Martin Freeman as his first mate (the one character who looks exactly like his human counterpart), David Tennant as Darwin, Jeremy Piven as the smug pirate Black Bellamy, and Imelda Staunton as a very energetic, pirate-hating Queen Victoria. We meet The Pirate Captain when he and his crew roll into Blood Island with the hopes of entering the Pirate of the Year competition, only to be shamed by the richer, showier, smack-talking pirates like Bellamy and the shapely Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek). On a mission to steal enough booty to win the prize, The Pirate Captain accidentally winds up on board the Beagle with Darwin, who discovers the Captain's portly parrot Polly isn't a parrot at all, but the last living dodo.

Darwin, who's motivated as much by science as a desire to finally get a girlfriend, convinces the pirates to bring Polly to a scientific exhibit in London, where they inevitably wind up in the crosshairs of Queen Victoria, who hates pirates so much she's on a sign warning them away at the entrance to the Thames. Adventure and silliness ensues, along with a few lessons to learn but more importantly endless, endless jokes and sight gags and tossed-off asides that constantly surprise. Pay attention to the signage in the aptly named Dodgy Alley in London, or the many different reactions of all the shocked scientists at the exhibition, or the weird artifacts in Darwin's house-- as always, the attention to detail is astonishing, and the varying elaborate settings in Pirates! allow the Aardman team to show off in nearly every scene.

And because all of these worlds are real, every character and setting actually built by hand on a studio stage, the obligatory 3D feels valuable here, further plunging you into this detailed world and allowing for the silly sight gags-- like an extra-special pirate flag with googly eyes-- to pop a little more. Happily, the 3D is the only evidence that Aardman is bowing to the tide of the times, and with company co-founder Peter Lord in the director's chair, Pirates! feels perfectly of a piece with everything else the studio has made-- daffy, self-assured, willing to try pretty much anything, and utterly unique.

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The Lucky One

Nicholas Sparks knows exactly who his audience is and, as exclusive as that may be, he knows he can find success writing directly to them. His books aren?t filled with brilliant ideas or commentary, just simple fantasy and romance that people can get lost in and then immediately forget. That said, it would be a surprise if even his most loyal fans could find something to love in the adaptation of his novel The Lucky One.

The story begins with a marine named Logan (Zac Efron) serving in the Iraq War. The morning after a night raid, he finds a picture of what just so happens to be a beautiful young woman buried in the dirt. When he stands and walks over to inspect it, an explosion erupts from the place where he was sitting and he takes it as a sign. Upon returning home, Logan goes on a search for the woman (Taylor Schilling), whom he learns is named Beth, but after meeting her has a mysteriously hard time telling her the truth. Instead, he lies for absolutely no reason and takes a job working at her family-run kennel. As months pass they grow closer and begin a relationship, but he still can?t tell her about the photo that he found in the desert.

You may now be asking yourself, ?Why wouldn?t he just tell her about the picture?? but it's a mystery that leads to the film's biggest issue: there?s no conflict driving the story. When Logan and Beth first meet he is about to tell her the truth, but when she interrupts him the message is dropped completely and doesn?t return as an issue until the third act. The movie tries to compensate for this gaping void by giving Beth an asshole ex-husband (who is as generic as they come) that Logan has to deal with, but it only serves as a distraction from the main point. Unfortunately, it?s such a dumb ploy that I doubt even the youngest members of the audience will fall for it.

While it?s no secret that Nicholas Sparks has been churning out the same story for years now, The Lucky One is actually insulting in how manufactured it is. As a character, Logan is constructed as the ultimate female fantasy: he looks like Zac Efron, is sensitive but never over-emotional, he plays the piano, enjoys long walks, and dogs, grandmothers and children all adore him. Logan is so perfect that it actually borders on parody. And it doesn?t stop there. Every character, be it the aforementioned asshole ex, the sassy grandma, or the precocious child, has been seen in thousands of other stories and not a single bit of originality is brought into the mix here.

Disastrous as the script is, The Lucky One does have a palatable aesthetic that meshes well with the tone. Much like a Thomas Kinkade painting, Scott Hicks?s direction is simplistic, making the movie nice to look at, but lacks any kind of real depth or creativity. Taking advantage of Louisiana?s natural beauty, sequences where Logan wanders around with his dog are plentiful and meaningless to the story, but are made tolerable thanks to the pleasing scenery. Abundance of soft focus aside ? which works well for the nature shots but only serves to further enhance the strange ?flawlessness? of the main character ? the film is generic in its look, but also quite pretty.

The Lucky One doesn?t have anything going for it that would make it worth the price of admission. If Nicholas Sparks? career has been dedicated to creating the most bland, generic, pointless romance that he can, then he?s successfully done it with his latest title. Perhaps now he?ll consider retirement.

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The Raven

Over the years it?s become easy to figure out which movies John Cusack does for the pleasure and fulfillment of being an actor and which ones he does for the paycheck. James McTeigue?s The Raven clearly falls in the latter category, as it?s impossible to believe that an actor as smart and talented as Cusack would actually be passionate about such an awful movie.

The story begins when the police discover the murdered bodies of a woman and her young daughter ? the mother?s throat slit from ear to ear with a razor and the girl?s body shoved up the chimney. To one of the detectives (Luke Evans), the scene is familiar: it?s taken directly from Edgar Allan Poe?s ?The Murders in the Rue Morgue?. After bringing in the writer (Cusack) for questioning, the police find another body killed in the fashion of ?The Pit and the Pendulum?. Bringing along Poe as a consultant, they work to try and hunt the serial killer down, but things get personal when Poe?s girlfriend (Alice Eve) is kidnapped and the author must race against the clock to find her.

Doing his best impression of Nicolas Cage, John Cusack spends the entirety of The Raven chewing on the scenery, and it?s actually hard to watch. There?s hardly a single line of his that isn?t shouted, whether he?s in a bar trying to win himself a free drink by proving his notoriety or in his editor?s office finding out that one of his critiques hasn?t been published. In addition to being laughable, it actually winds up hurting the movie when it tries to create any kind of tension. Knowing how much Poe loves to scream at the top of his lungs, it?s hard to take him seriously, even when he?s shouting his beloved?s name trying to find where she has been kidnapped to.

Stylistically, everything about the film feels exaggerated and overdone. Even when it adds nothing to the story or tone, The Raven?s violence is bloody and unyielding. In the ?Pit and the Pendulum? scene, for example, McTeigue doesn?t choose to capitalize on the incredible tension and fear that Poe originally imagined when thinking about a giant swinging blade slowly lowering towards a man?s strapped down body. Instead, it falls quickly and we watch as it saws through the victim?s body multiple times for no apparent reason other than violence for violence?s sake. The movie imagines itself as dark and edgy, but it comes across as being stupid and gratuitous.

The script, written by Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare, is an utter disaster. It?s not hard to appreciate the idea behind the story ? Poe is one of the greatest writers who ever lived and deserves to have his stories on the big screen ? but the execution is miserable. Poe?s stories that are used as part of the plot feel like they were picked out of a hat and then haphazardly thrown into the script like a misshapen puzzle piece. The structure and pacing is choppy at best, constantly shifting gears and changing stories, and the ending is so out-of-left-field that you actually find yourself wondering if you may have dozed off at some point. I suppose the best thing to say about it is that it?s not predictable, but in the grand scheme that?s not much of a compliment.

The Raven is a hard movie to watch, and not just in the sense of its brutality. There?s so much wasted potential at play, from the nugget of an idea at the center of the story to the great cast. Unfortunately, there?s nothing to the execution and the result is a loud, over-done piece of noise and nonsense.

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