This film is such a bizarre combination of dullness, pirate trivia and disturbing plot elements that I found myself compelled to watch it to the end in order to review it. At the beginning of the film some pirates in the early 1700s make their way to a small coastal town in Nova Scotia, Canada, in order to bury some treasure underneath a sea-side manor (ie large house). Eventually the title of the movie appears on the screen and we're catapulted into present-day Nova Scotia. Oh wait, no, it's not present day it's 1952. This kind of era-shopping allows the author (this is an adaption of a novel) to revel in all kinds of political incorrectness, such as harassing women with painfully tired misogynist tropes.
Anyway, so what happens is, an old guy who was on the pirate ship in 1717 at the beginning of the movie shows up in a much smaller boat in 1952, just after we see a kid, Jim, get bullied at school by another kid who likes to sick his dog on Jim (the dog's name, by the way, is Grendel, because everyone in this story is highly educated with classic literature, unlike, well just about everyone in the real Nova Scotia of 1952). Jim sees the boat struggling in a storm from his window at the big house on the rocks which is now a quaint Inn where Jim lives with his mother, and Jim incredulously proclaims to his mother that a pirate is at the helm, even though the sea is rough and he has no binoculars. The old guy ties his boat off with help from Jim and immediately after the old guy enters the Inn, 'Immigration', who must've been tracking the guy by radar since 1717, arrives to tell him to stay in the Inn and not go anywhere while some kind of immigration paper work gets sent to Halifax. Why they think he is a foreigner in the first place is not explored, even though it's far more likely he's some old cod-catching codger from another village up or down the coast. The immigration guy leaves without even asking the old guy for ID of any kind, but don't worry, he'll be back later with a partner.
Now, Jim just happens to be writing an essay on pirates for school, so it's a good thing this old man who seems to know everything about pirates showed up. He starts telling the kid various stuff about pirates, ultimately explaining that pirates are like modern day capitalists, who are bad. But pirates were good. Even though they're like bad capitalists. One such bad capitalist happens to live nearby and has designs on purchasing the Inn and developing it into a 'resort hotel'. Never mind that this is Nova Scotia in 1952 and nobody in their right mind would be investing in anything but a fish processing plant, and that this guy would be heralded a hero by the entire town for wanting to develop, he's a bad guy anyway because the old man noticed suspicious boat-traffic at his waterfront warehouse. Someone even tells Jim that the local bad guy has a fancy new car that is "the only one of it's kind in Canada". How anyone would know that is anyone's guess, but later Jim insists that he knows it's true when Jim's policeman uncle teams up with him to pull a weird stunt to entrap the bad capitalist guy. You see Jim's mother, who owns the Inn apparently owes the capitalist a considerable amount of money, because he lent her money to keep the Inn afloat. But he didn't do that because he's a nice guy, he did that so that he can eventually somehow "extort" Jim's mother into handing over ownership of the Inn. If his intention was not to help Jim's mother keep the Inn going, rather than giving her a loan, he could've just let the Inn fail and then buy it, at a distressed, lower rate, and take ownership much sooner than he would if he had to wait to buy out the mother's share by calling due the loan.
After lighting a fire with his breath and telling the Inn maiden that the devil helped him do it, the old guy takes Jim on an astral journey through the satanic fire (I'm not kidding!) to a pirate ship in 1720. They wander around on the ship, and Jim sees a rat and goes "eek" which a pirate almost hears, uh oh! During this aside, the old guy turns pop-philosopher by telling Jim such deep gems as: "Life is full of decisions, try to make good ones", and his favorite maxim, which he repeats frequently: "What is, is", which is apparently the 1700s version of everyone's favorite 21st century meaningless tautology: "It is what it is". He also explains that pirates had 'one of the first democracies', failing to credit any Greeks from thousands of years prior. It's clear by this point that the old guy is a major pirate apologist.
The old guy decides he needs to move a trunk off his boat so that customs won't see it, but Jim objects because that would be breaking the law since the immigration guy said not to take anything off the boat. The old guy says it's OK, those rules apply to smugglers, not him, even though hiding the trunk off the boat to keep customs from seeing it is the very definition of smuggling. Jim agrees only if the old guy shows him what is in the trunk. The old guy obliges and opens the trunk which has some scrolls in it one of which is shown to be a Shakespeare folio, so it makes sense that he would want to hide the trunk off the boat - he's smuggling antique literature that must be worth a fortune! Most prominently placed in the trunk is a very old book with the title "History of Pirates". While this story is fiction, that book actually exists. Except it's called 'A General History of the Pyrates'. I guess the author of this adaptation, as much of a pirate apologist as his protagonist, did not want to portray his pirate heroes as antiquated spellers since his modern audience would likely assume pirates just can't spell because they're illiterate but that wouldn't square with the ridiculously shoe-horned portrayal of pirates as being highly principled swashbuckling gents. The book was written by a Charles Johnson, which is thought in real-life to have been a pseudonym of a non-pirate writer in Britain. But as soon as Jim sees the book in the trunk he exclaims "You're the Captain Johnson!" The old man doesn't disagree, so from here on out I'll call him Johnson. For some reason Jim didn't say, "You're William Shakespeare!" when the Shakespeare folio was shown in the trunk before the pirate book.
So Johnson and Jim set out to bust the Capitalist, whom Johnson has decided has made his fortune by smuggling stuff into his waterfront warehouse. How are they going to do this? Well, by doing what pirates would do, which Johnson says is "attack him before he attacks us". The attack consists of Jim flattening one of the tires on the Capitalist's car so he can't escape when Jim's policeman uncle and the customs officials (who were previously immigration officials, I guess officials did a lot of double-duty in 1952 Nova Scotia) show up to bust him. After puncturing the tire, Jim sips from a straw in a disposable cup with a plastic lid, something I very much doubt would be in existence in a sleepy Nova Scotia town in 1952. If the Capitalist develops the area into a seaside resort, then sure, disposable cups all around. But before?? I don't think so. And so we come to the most laughable plot-hole of all, even though it almost seems like it could happen in 1952's Nova Scotia: The Capitalist is busted for smuggling, and the cop announces that because he is a smuggler that's proof he must be trying to 'extort' the Inn owners (by having the audacity to call his loan to them due), so he's going to prison for a long time.
YAY everyone is happy, oh except Jim who still has a bully and his dog to deal with. The bully appears and Jim, who apparently needed all the banal proclamations about life from Johnson in order to muster the courage to stick up for himself, refuses to back down. The bully asks Jim what he's going to do, and Jim delivers what is both the most hilarious and bizarrely disturbing line of the movie: "I'm going to kill your dog" The dog, Grendel, is of course the only innocent party in this sad mess of a story, but according to the twisted morality of this animated world, Jim is justified in threatening to kill the dog. And so far we've seen no indication that pirates were known for bluffing threats of violence.
The only good thing in this production is some of the background artwork and a few of the animation scenes. Most of the animation is bare-budget stuff but the background stills are actually quite detailed. I can't imagine what it would be like being an animator spending hours upon hours drawing for this awful story.
In any case, the moral of the story seems to be that smugglers and bankers are much worse than pirates. In one of their astral journeys to a pirate ship, Jim and Johnson look on sympathetically as a pirate captain laments, right before attacking a cargo ship, that he certainly hopes there won't be any bloodshed, all the pirates want is the cargo. What a bunch of swell guys those old pirates were, although they will probably have to shed blood to get their booty, they'd rather not, unlike the present-day smuggler capitalist who actually wants to develop the area into something more than rocky crag that smells of rotting fish 24/7, and who wouldn't have to worry about shedding any blood to do that.
UPDATE: I want to stipulate that I am the furthest from a sympathizer of capitalism as may be possible, but this movie made me root for capitalism like no other has! In my review I originally accused it of using piracy to introduce socialism to pirate fans, but I now realize that is quite a reach. I think that the author was just an old capitalism-wary hippy with some strange ideas about real-estate contracts, who wanted to write the book to romanticize pirates as he reminisced over having read Treasure Island as a kid, an experience that must've had a great impact him at the time, when life was more carefree, before he had developed his rudimentary political views.
Anyway, so what happens is, an old guy who was on the pirate ship in 1717 at the beginning of the movie shows up in a much smaller boat in 1952, just after we see a kid, Jim, get bullied at school by another kid who likes to sick his dog on Jim (the dog's name, by the way, is Grendel, because everyone in this story is highly educated with classic literature, unlike, well just about everyone in the real Nova Scotia of 1952). Jim sees the boat struggling in a storm from his window at the big house on the rocks which is now a quaint Inn where Jim lives with his mother, and Jim incredulously proclaims to his mother that a pirate is at the helm, even though the sea is rough and he has no binoculars. The old guy ties his boat off with help from Jim and immediately after the old guy enters the Inn, 'Immigration', who must've been tracking the guy by radar since 1717, arrives to tell him to stay in the Inn and not go anywhere while some kind of immigration paper work gets sent to Halifax. Why they think he is a foreigner in the first place is not explored, even though it's far more likely he's some old cod-catching codger from another village up or down the coast. The immigration guy leaves without even asking the old guy for ID of any kind, but don't worry, he'll be back later with a partner.
Now, Jim just happens to be writing an essay on pirates for school, so it's a good thing this old man who seems to know everything about pirates showed up. He starts telling the kid various stuff about pirates, ultimately explaining that pirates are like modern day capitalists, who are bad. But pirates were good. Even though they're like bad capitalists. One such bad capitalist happens to live nearby and has designs on purchasing the Inn and developing it into a 'resort hotel'. Never mind that this is Nova Scotia in 1952 and nobody in their right mind would be investing in anything but a fish processing plant, and that this guy would be heralded a hero by the entire town for wanting to develop, he's a bad guy anyway because the old man noticed suspicious boat-traffic at his waterfront warehouse. Someone even tells Jim that the local bad guy has a fancy new car that is "the only one of it's kind in Canada". How anyone would know that is anyone's guess, but later Jim insists that he knows it's true when Jim's policeman uncle teams up with him to pull a weird stunt to entrap the bad capitalist guy. You see Jim's mother, who owns the Inn apparently owes the capitalist a considerable amount of money, because he lent her money to keep the Inn afloat. But he didn't do that because he's a nice guy, he did that so that he can eventually somehow "extort" Jim's mother into handing over ownership of the Inn. If his intention was not to help Jim's mother keep the Inn going, rather than giving her a loan, he could've just let the Inn fail and then buy it, at a distressed, lower rate, and take ownership much sooner than he would if he had to wait to buy out the mother's share by calling due the loan.
After lighting a fire with his breath and telling the Inn maiden that the devil helped him do it, the old guy takes Jim on an astral journey through the satanic fire (I'm not kidding!) to a pirate ship in 1720. They wander around on the ship, and Jim sees a rat and goes "eek" which a pirate almost hears, uh oh! During this aside, the old guy turns pop-philosopher by telling Jim such deep gems as: "Life is full of decisions, try to make good ones", and his favorite maxim, which he repeats frequently: "What is, is", which is apparently the 1700s version of everyone's favorite 21st century meaningless tautology: "It is what it is". He also explains that pirates had 'one of the first democracies', failing to credit any Greeks from thousands of years prior. It's clear by this point that the old guy is a major pirate apologist.
The old guy decides he needs to move a trunk off his boat so that customs won't see it, but Jim objects because that would be breaking the law since the immigration guy said not to take anything off the boat. The old guy says it's OK, those rules apply to smugglers, not him, even though hiding the trunk off the boat to keep customs from seeing it is the very definition of smuggling. Jim agrees only if the old guy shows him what is in the trunk. The old guy obliges and opens the trunk which has some scrolls in it one of which is shown to be a Shakespeare folio, so it makes sense that he would want to hide the trunk off the boat - he's smuggling antique literature that must be worth a fortune! Most prominently placed in the trunk is a very old book with the title "History of Pirates". While this story is fiction, that book actually exists. Except it's called 'A General History of the Pyrates'. I guess the author of this adaptation, as much of a pirate apologist as his protagonist, did not want to portray his pirate heroes as antiquated spellers since his modern audience would likely assume pirates just can't spell because they're illiterate but that wouldn't square with the ridiculously shoe-horned portrayal of pirates as being highly principled swashbuckling gents. The book was written by a Charles Johnson, which is thought in real-life to have been a pseudonym of a non-pirate writer in Britain. But as soon as Jim sees the book in the trunk he exclaims "You're the Captain Johnson!" The old man doesn't disagree, so from here on out I'll call him Johnson. For some reason Jim didn't say, "You're William Shakespeare!" when the Shakespeare folio was shown in the trunk before the pirate book.
So Johnson and Jim set out to bust the Capitalist, whom Johnson has decided has made his fortune by smuggling stuff into his waterfront warehouse. How are they going to do this? Well, by doing what pirates would do, which Johnson says is "attack him before he attacks us". The attack consists of Jim flattening one of the tires on the Capitalist's car so he can't escape when Jim's policeman uncle and the customs officials (who were previously immigration officials, I guess officials did a lot of double-duty in 1952 Nova Scotia) show up to bust him. After puncturing the tire, Jim sips from a straw in a disposable cup with a plastic lid, something I very much doubt would be in existence in a sleepy Nova Scotia town in 1952. If the Capitalist develops the area into a seaside resort, then sure, disposable cups all around. But before?? I don't think so. And so we come to the most laughable plot-hole of all, even though it almost seems like it could happen in 1952's Nova Scotia: The Capitalist is busted for smuggling, and the cop announces that because he is a smuggler that's proof he must be trying to 'extort' the Inn owners (by having the audacity to call his loan to them due), so he's going to prison for a long time.
YAY everyone is happy, oh except Jim who still has a bully and his dog to deal with. The bully appears and Jim, who apparently needed all the banal proclamations about life from Johnson in order to muster the courage to stick up for himself, refuses to back down. The bully asks Jim what he's going to do, and Jim delivers what is both the most hilarious and bizarrely disturbing line of the movie: "I'm going to kill your dog" The dog, Grendel, is of course the only innocent party in this sad mess of a story, but according to the twisted morality of this animated world, Jim is justified in threatening to kill the dog. And so far we've seen no indication that pirates were known for bluffing threats of violence.
The only good thing in this production is some of the background artwork and a few of the animation scenes. Most of the animation is bare-budget stuff but the background stills are actually quite detailed. I can't imagine what it would be like being an animator spending hours upon hours drawing for this awful story.
In any case, the moral of the story seems to be that smugglers and bankers are much worse than pirates. In one of their astral journeys to a pirate ship, Jim and Johnson look on sympathetically as a pirate captain laments, right before attacking a cargo ship, that he certainly hopes there won't be any bloodshed, all the pirates want is the cargo. What a bunch of swell guys those old pirates were, although they will probably have to shed blood to get their booty, they'd rather not, unlike the present-day smuggler capitalist who actually wants to develop the area into something more than rocky crag that smells of rotting fish 24/7, and who wouldn't have to worry about shedding any blood to do that.
UPDATE: I want to stipulate that I am the furthest from a sympathizer of capitalism as may be possible, but this movie made me root for capitalism like no other has! In my review I originally accused it of using piracy to introduce socialism to pirate fans, but I now realize that is quite a reach. I think that the author was just an old capitalism-wary hippy with some strange ideas about real-estate contracts, who wanted to write the book to romanticize pirates as he reminisced over having read Treasure Island as a kid, an experience that must've had a great impact him at the time, when life was more carefree, before he had developed his rudimentary political views.