The 1980s' third and least faithful Penzance adaptation casts Kristy McNichol as an ostracized tomboy who loses herself in an elaborate fantasy world where she finds love with a dashing young pirate (male starlet Christopher Atkins) eager to go straight. Atkins' lusty pirate mentor (Ted Hamilton) seems reluctant to let his young charge go, forcing McNichol and Atkins to defend both the home front and the purity of McNichol's sisters from Hamilton and his merry band of marauders.
Though not quite as enjoyably awful as it should be, The Pirate Movie is nevertheless a strange beast whose faithfulness exists in a state of constant flux. Sometimes the film works as an essentially straight Gilbert & Sullivan adaptation, but at other times, director Ken Annakin seems to be remaking The Blue Lagoon, with Atkins romping shirtlessly around the beach for much of the film. In his engagingly daft commentary, geriatric Disney vet Annakin admits that he looked to Lagoon for inspiration, but he seems similarly indebted to Grease, which seems the transparent source for the film's multiple soft-focus romantic montages, drippy love songs, and final production number. Today, much of the film's appeal is predicated on its status as ripe '80s cheese. Ironically, though, its sense of humor seems curiously contemporary, rooted as it is in scatological gags, winking asides, and pop-culture references (Star Wars, Raiders Of The Lost Ark) so obvious that even the dimmest seat-plugger can feel in on the joke. If The Pirate Movie didn't exist, the tidal wave of '80s nostalgia embodied by VH1's endless retro orgies would have to create it from scratch, but its eagerness to pander to general audiences marks it as disturbingly prescient in this age of Shrek and Scary Movie.
