Animated / Family
2008 / 86 minutes
Rating: 8/10
A pirate movie for kids?
A pirate movie where no one has arms?
A pirate movie where everyone’s a vegetable?
Yup, it’s all that and so much more.
It’s been 30 years now since we were first introduced to the “Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything.” This trio of sailing singers were played by Larry the Cucumber, Pa Grape, and Mr. Lunt (a gourd), and wiggled their way into our hearts via a short 3-minute ditty that may well be the greatest of all the VeggieTale Silly Songs (with the only competition being, of course, “The Hairbrush Song“). And if your kids don’t know the Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything song, you absolutely gotta show it to them now, before they check out the feature film of the same name. So here it is.
And the movie is even better, as hard as that might be to believe.
Larry the Cucumber, Pa Grape, and Mr. Lunt play a trio of waiters at a pirate-themed dinner-theater. They’re dressed as cabin boys, and get everyone their refills as a vast cast of actors on board a life-size pirate ship battle it out in front of the diners. It’s a job, but what they really want to do is star in the show themselves.
But instead of playing heroes the three get a chance to be heroes when a strange golden orb transports them into the past. A girl, Princess Eloise, is search for heroes to come help her save her brother, Prince Alexander, from the Pirates who have kidnapped them. So she sent out the magical orb… and it picked these three waiters.
They aren’t brave, smart, or even hard-working, but in this adventure they’ll learn how to be the heroes they’ve always want to be… with a little help from Princess Eloise and her butler Willory.
It’s everything goofy and clever and cute about the Veggietales, and without the irreverence that’s so often a part of their biblical adaptations. It’s probably best for the under 12 set, but there’s enough humor here to keep mom and dad amused too, especially if they grew up with the VeggieTale crew.
Cautions
There’s lots of battles – swords swishing, a cannon firing – but no blood or injuries. And because no one has arms, it’s not all that tense. The scariest scene, and scariest critters, are actually some Cheetos-sized critters that they mistake for, well, Cheetos… and who don’t take kindly to it, and chase the Mr. Lunt over hill and dale for the rest of the film. There is also mechanical dragon that pops up and seems to eat Larry… but a few seconds later he appears again, safe and sound. So, it could be scary for some kids under 8.
The only potty-humor is likewise, momentary – a fearsome pirate has a character so scared he admits to almost wetting himself. Other language concerns would be characters blurting: holy mackerel, Pete’s sake, and heavens.
The biggest caution would be along theological lines – Princess Eloise often speaks of her father, and like the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, her father is supposed to be analogous to our Father in Heaven. The weird bit is that the orb the Princess sends out is at least loosely analogous to a summons by God… so it’s odd that, at a critical juncture in the story when the trio absolutely can’t leave yet (there’s still people to be rescued) the orb tells them they can go home. So, later, they ask Princess Eloise’s father, why the orb told them that. It was test, he says. And what was the test? That they had to ignore the orb and do what they know was right? I don’t want to stretch the analogy too far, but if the orb was a messenger from “the father” then shouldn’t they listen to it, rather than their own notions of what’s right? That’s not as big a deal as I’m making it here – it amounts to about 20 seconds of screen time – but I don’t get what the writers were trying to do here.
Conclusion
I first saw this nearly 20 years ago, and enjoyed sharing it with my kids now. We’d played some VeggieTales back when they were pre-school, and now, ten years later, they’ve aged out… but are you ever too old for Larry and Bob? I don’t think so. We all liked it a lot, and I suspect that 12 and under would love it, so I’m giving it an 8.
Check out the trailer below.