The Pirate Movie (1982)

What I didn’t mention yesterday when we looked at 1983’s The Pirates of Penzance, is that except for Angela Lansbury it featured the entire cast from a massively popular, Tony-winning Broadway revival of the opera that had been going on since 1981. But a year before that was faithfully adapted into the 1983 movie, its popularity got it made into another film: the massively unpopular, Raspberry-winning dud, The Pirate Movie.

I hadn’t intended on ever wasting my time on this universally panned movie, but the same cable channel that ran Penzance also ran this one, so again with shrugged shoulders, I gave it a shot. And surprisingly, I liked it a lot better than I expected to.

Oh, there are horrible, horrible parts to it. But there’s also some genuinely funny silliness that’s very much in keeping with the spirit of the “comedic opera.” The cops aren’t quite as awesome here as they are in the Kevin Kline version, but they’re still very good and remind me even more of Monty Python. And then there are the parts where Frederic’s sword becomes a lightsaber and Indiana Jones and Inspector Clouseau show up. I’m not lying. It’s stupid, but it made me chuckle in its stupidity.

What didn’t make me chuckle was the romance angle between Kristy McNichol (love of my life when I was ten) and Christopher Atkins (Blue Lagoon). There are two things wrong with it.

One is the stupid framing sequence that has a nerdy, modern-day McNichol falling for studly, modern-day Atkins at some kind of marina pirate festival. Atkins seems to be a nice kid and invites her and her friends on a boat ride, but her “friends” conspire to leave her behind. McNichol follows in a small boat, but because she doesn’t know anything about sailing, she goes overboard and is washed unconscious up on a beach where she dreams about The Pirates of Penzance with her as Mabel (also her modern-day character’s name) and Atkins as Frederic.

Most of the rest of the story fluctuates between more or less faithfully adapting Penzance and spoofing other movies. The word “shit” is used a lot for supposedly humorous effect. There are many double entendres. So, yes, while there are some charmingly stupid parts, there are also many stupid parts that are just the ordinary, unfunny kind of stupid.

I also didn’t mention yesterday how lame the ending of Pirates of Penzance is. I was trying not to spoil it and I’ll still try now, but I have to explain that the resolution of the conflict comes out of nowhere. The Pirate Movie doesn’t so much correct that as emphasize it by coming up with an even lamer, out-of-nowhere resolution. I don’t mind spoiling this one, so I’ll just tell you that Mabel realizes she’s dreaming and uses that knowledge to affect the story. Since it’s her dream, she can make it end however she wants to, even if that means making people act completely out of character. And she does.

Once she wakes up on the beach, Atkins finds her and in one of those super dumb “Was I Dreaming or Wasn’t I?” moments that you sometimes see in awful movies, Mabel realizes that she’s wearing a ring she got while she was unconscious. Then Atkins picks her up, kisses her passionately for absolutely no reason at all, and whisks her off to freaking marry her back at the marina.

What?!

The other thing wrong with the romance is that there are entirely too many stupid love duets between the two characters. The Pirate Movie uses a lot of music from Pirates of Penzance and that’s cool, even especially when they update the lyrics to reference current affairs. But the ‘80s weren’t hurting for more bland pop duets and there are so many of them in this movie. I would’ve been fine with one. I could’ve convinced myself that while sending up The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Pink Panther they were also spoofing Atkins’ own Blue Lagoon. And I think there had to be some of that going on. But if it’s meant as a joke, it’s a joke that wears thin after three or four tellings.

I can’t recommend this movie to anyone except a certain kind of Pirates of Penzance fan with a tolerance for Meet the Spartans-style movie spoofing. Surely that’s a small, small number of people. I’m one of them and even I had a hard time with it.

Two out of five lightrapiers.