Description: "Buckle your swash and jolly your roger for the ultimate musical comedy pirate adventure! Kristy McNichol (LITTLE DARLINGS) and Christopher Atkins (THE BLUE LAGOON) star as dreamy young lovers in this uproarious update of Gilbert & Sullivan’s THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE, filled with virtuous maidens and shirtless cutthroats, savage swordplay and buried treasure, a dashing Pirate King (Ted Hamilton) and a modern Major General (Bill Kerr), plus plenty of pillaging, plundering, plank-walking fun! For years, fans have been clamoring for this infamous ’80s musical from the Oscar®-nominated director of THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES (1966). The wait is over: THE PIRATE MOVIE is now presented with a brand-new Widescreen Transfer, featuring a fascinating new Director’s Commentary and mixed in timber-shivering Dolby 5.1 Surround! "
The Pirate Movie Saw the movie years ago when it first came out and my daughter and i both loved it. Bought one for her AND one for me. Lots of my family members loved it too. If you like quirkey, comedic, musical spoofs this is DEFINATELY for you. Good for the whole family and you can't say that very often anymore.
FUN MOVIE and GREAT MUSIC! I absolutely love this movie. Though it is far fetched, it's from the 80's, so what would you expect. I love the chemistry between Chris Atkins and Kristy McNichol and I'd love it if they made a sequel to this movie. I used to watch this as a teen and I loved the romance of it all. The music is great, there is some decent comedy (which I now fully understand) and the acting is good. It's a nice movie to get lost in for a little while and forget your troubles, chores, etc. I just wish I could find the soundtrack on cd for this movie though.
Family Favorite We first found this movie when my daughters were pre-teens. It is still one of our all time favorites. If you like musicals like Grease and Bye-Bye Birdie, you will be a fan of this one as well. We were so happy to find it on DVD because we had been using a recorded off TV VHS for many years. Give me a happy ending - every time!
Give me a happy ending every time ... I am on a Christopher Atkins kick these days. It sounds like a strange thing to say, but having recently discovered the tripe that he starred in has really done something to me. What that is, I'm not sure, but this is a movie that slipped under the radar. It deserved to slip under the radar, but going back to this hilarious song and dance takes me back to a simpler time.
This is a modern day version of Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. It's rather campy and silly with the off color humor, the hoaky costumes, and the typical Ugly Duckling story. The Pirate King is Fabio, Kristy McNichol is the nervous geek girl, and of course Christopher Atkins (who choose to embrace his teen idol status rather than fight it) bares his chest a lot.
Have fun with it.
Even worse than "Gentlemen of Titipu" Well, I hate to admit to being wrong, but there actually is a worse Sullivan & Gilbert adaptation than "Gentlemen of Titipu". This one seems to pin its hopes on the presence of some delectable eye candy - namely, Chris Atkins, fresh from taking his clothes off in "Blue Lagoon". This is a performance that "runs the emotional gamut from A to B" - as the brilliant Dorothy Parker once snipped about the equally brilliant Katharine Hepburn.
Don't worry, friends; it goes downhill from there.
The film in question goes by the title "The Pirate Movie". The reason for the title is, apparently, that the people responsible have pirated some pieces of Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance" - just enough to make you wish they had pirated the whole operetta and jettisoned the drek they added to the maimed remains they used.
Appearing in this wanton travesty are a bunch of little- and un-knowns who couldn't have salvaged the production even if it was good. Which of course it isn't. So the whole baggage sinks under its own dead, dead, dead, boring weight. Well, it wasn't their fault, really; it was a job for a lot of people who, judging by their credits on the IMDB, didn't get many. The names are withheld to protect the presumed innocent.
The story of "The Pirate Movie" follows the general and well-known outline of "Pirates of Penzance" (which is easy enough to look up if you don't know it) - although with a number of rather stupid changes that sap it of its original vitality. To substitute for this vapidity, a composer was hired to write some "up" music. His talent, if any, is scarcely on display. What we get meager quotations from some of Sullivan's "Penzance" tunes - although not always readily recognizable and usually not in the spirit of the original. Then there is a lot of stuff in a two-bit modern idiom that is also wholly out of touch with Sullivan's originality and wittiness.
This film is so awful on so many levels it's hard to find anything positive to say about it. The color is vibrant; that is to say, wasted on what it shows. The sound is at least too good for the material.
Ah, well. At least Atkins runs about in descamiado mode for most of the film, which I suppose is some slight compensation. And not enough. Avoid this turkey.
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