If you can stomach some droll British humour, you’ve hit the jackpot. After Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit, Aardman animation studios gets it right again in this stop-motion animation adventure. Witty, humorous and thoroughly enjoyable The Pirates! Band of Misfits is a winning package for the entire family.

In the film, the piratical band of misfits belongs to Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant), a bumbling leader lovingly followed by his genuinely genial crew (these pirates with the heart of gold aren’t like your regular sea-surfing plunderers).

Pirate Captain dreams to win the Pirate of the Year award, an annual award held by the Pirate King (who always makes an entry from inside a giant clam) on the Blood Island. Also in the running for the award are rivals Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) and Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven)–both of which have preposterous feats and booties to their name.

To win the award, Pirate Captain goes on a rampage to prove himself, with ill effects. Soon they are full of tales of raiding lepers and orphans while their gold still eludes them. Then Captain and crew capture Charles Darwin (David Tennant), who gives them the idea to go to London and present their big-boned Parrot (actually a dodo bird) to the scientific world and win invaluable prizes.

Once in London the Pirates meet Darwin’s sophisticated and cultured chimpanzee, who communicates through cue cards, and the pirate-hating (and just plain nasty) Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton).

Directed by Jeff Newitt and Peter Lord, the duo knows what Aardman Animation Studio does best, and with Pirates they raise the bar of stunning stop-motion animation (Lord is also the co-founder of Aardman and co-director of Chicken Run).

Besides having a crackerjack sense of comedy, Pirates like Wallace and Gromit, has the timeless aura of old world animation and storytelling. It’s not as hip or trendy as most in vogue, fast-driven CGI animations today (a factor which may result in box-office losses).

Pirates will tickle the funny bones of little kids with their slapstick antics and parents–especially those attuned to dialogues–will chuckle all the way through with the film’s openly British sensibility.

The film has been released by Sony Pictures, produced by Aardman Animations and is rated PG. Pirates, Band of Misfits is adapted by Gideon Defoe from his original book. In some parts of the world the film is called Pirates in an Adventure with Scientists and if you ask me, that was a better title. —Farheen Jawaid