My son is into pirates and I’m having a bit of a hard time with that. I just can’t reconcile the bad behavior of pirates with being something ADMIRABLE. That said, I know there are just plain fun pirate tales and I feel I can’t deny my son the joys of wearing an eye patch (he’s a really cute little pirate if I do say so myself!) so I was completely delighted with Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything
Although Veggie Tales is typically seen as being a “Christian” series, I think Big Idea Productions has gone a long ways to “neutralize” their message to some degree. They certainly are not blatant in their message. They’ve started to learn towards making their stories more parable-like which is actually something I greatly appreciate (as I really don’t care for their Biblical veggie adaptations). I didn’t expect to really enjoy Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything
The good pirates win, the bad pirates loose, there are challenges in the journey but nothing too scary and there are silly songs. My son is absolutely delighted and so am I.
To steal a bit from Wikipedia for a description: the story opens with with two veggie pirate ships fighting one another. The prince, Alexander of Monterria, is captured by Robert the Terrible, his uncle. The other pirates search the ship for the princess, Eloise. They cannot find her hiding spot and leave the ship. But Eloise and her butler Willory (Archibald) come out from their hiding place and she sends a helpseeker that her father made, to find heroes to save Alexander. It evades the pirates on the ship and jumps into the sea.
The helpseeker locates three “pirates” working at a themed dinner theater. They think their selection as heroes is a mistake but in time they realize that they were perfectly selected to pursue this adventure against Robert the Terrible. (And again, the terrible pirate is not so very scary at all which I very much appreciated.)
Furthermore, just in case you cannot get enough of these quirky little pirates, Thomas Nelson has one of the coolest set of board books that we have ever, ever seen! The three pirates, George (Pa Grape), Sedgewick (Mr. Lunt), and Elliot (Larry), come boxed up in their own little pirate ship. (We got a lot of mileage out of the ship, not to mention the books. The ship is AWESOME!!!) The books themselves enforce the messages from the movie. In one book it talks about how even little people can do big things, in another it talks about being brave and in the other talks about laziness. Of course, each book is somewhat silly, in keeping with the silly songs from the movie.
I wasn’t sure what to think about the book set but I was curious to check it out. These books (and don’t forget the ship that they come in!) have been the most awesome play toys I could have thought of. (Really. Whoever came up with the ship idea is a marketing genius.) We have played and played with these books, the characters, the boat and occasionally we even read them! Cute idea to accompany the movie.
Pirates that I do not find offensive. The whole house is happy.
Carrie comes by her book obsession honestly, having descended from a long line of bibliophiles. She blogs about books regularly at Reading to Know.
Thanks for this review. My guys are past the age for Veggie Tales, but if they were still into them, this would be one I would check out.
I agree with you about preferring the parables to the Biblical adaptations — I didn’t like the way those were handled.
Oh, this is one of my kids’ favorites, and even the 9 year old will still watch it and crack up at all of the hysterical plays on words and funny things they say! I love when the guy swims away from the cheese curls (yes, as weird as that sounds) and he says something about the wonder of his feat, especially since he doesn’t even have arms! I laugh out loud at that one every single time. Such a funny movie, and I appreciate the nondenominational approach to spreading good messages, personally.
My older girls have loved Veggie Tales. My younger two have not really watched the series. I should try to get my hands on this pirate episode as my little guy will probably love it.
Thanks for the reminder about Veggie Tales!
This one’s a hit in our house. Of course, L. would watch any Veggie Tales DVDs all day long if I would let him… But some are more fun for the older people in our house than others.
“I laughed. I cried. It moved me, Bob (Carrie).” 🙂