pirates! in an adventure with scientists

I should have posted this yesterday, but was far too busy and forgot!

I really wanted to like this.

It's made by Aardman (in Claymation - they've done a few digital films too) and is an adaptation of a series of popular books.  As I understand it the books aren't actually aimed at children, but I think this film was.

I'm not sure if that was my problem with it, though.  My real problem was more that it felt like you needed to have read the books to really get the film.  Or, to put it another way, it felt like we were being dumped inside a world where we were supposed to know how everything worked (what the "rules" were), but I didn't, so I felt lost.

Which isn't to say I thought it was a bad film, it's just that I found myself confused at bits and so missing other bits.  Why, for example, is the Pirate Captain called Pirate Captain?  I'm guessing there's actually no explanation for that in the books as it's meant to be a joke, but why are all the other pirates on his ship known by their defining characteristics, rather than proper names.  So there's Albino Pirate and Pirate with Gout, for example.  It's particularly odd as other pirates that aren't on the ship have names - is it just because Pirate Captain forgets their names?  Forgetfulness isn't really a trait they play up.

But then saying that they never really refer to each other by name either - the only one who does is Pirate Captain, and even then, not all the time.  So Pirate with Gout has a bandaged leg, but it was only at the end when the credits rolled I realised that this was because he was meant to be suffering with gout.

I mean, perhaps it was mentioned elsewhere in the film but I missed it.  The trouble is that's my point - I seemed to miss quite a few things that were important to make things funny or to help the plot.

So, for example, at one point a character is crushed.  After a few moments he then appears in a doorway, confounding the hero's theory.  Well, how did he get in the doorway?  Did he crawl along the sewer?  Maybe it's explained, but otherwise it's random.

Now random can be funny, but I don't think random was meant to be the type of funny here.

Another example was that another character finds a document that then explains some stuff later on.  However, I completely missed this and only discovered that was meant to be the point when they said it in the commentary.

As it was when he said "I found out X" I was left wondering how he found out X and where he'd got the bit of paper from that he showed Pirate Captain to prove X.

Again, it's a relatively minor thing, but it seemed to happen quite a lot and I kept finding myself going "eh?" rather than laughing.

I dunno, maybe it's me - perhaps I was a bit tired or something?

I mean the film looked great and there was plenty in there I did enjoy, it's just I didn't like it as much as I thought I would.