For the most part, being a kid sucks. You need someone’s permission before you can have dessert. You can be sent to bed at any time for any reason. Every few years someone makes you spend what seems to be about twelve hours at a photo studio in uncomfortable church clothes so you can take an awkward family portrait (in every Sears Portrait Studio family photo from my childhood, I look, and felt, like a hostage.)
Being an adult is better. Yes, you owe money every month for water and electricity and gas and housing and a car and insurance and taxes and credit cards and the installments on your fine for transporting illegal firearms across state lines, but, if you ask me, it’s a bargain no matter how expensive.
Because you can now eat ice cream any time that you want.
That means a lot to me. I wake up everyday and am glad that I’m an adult. If I’m not too hungover, I get up out of bed and instantly start singing about it. If my sciatic nerves aren’t hurting too badly, I do a little dance. Every morning of my life is another Gilbert & Sullivan musical, by fucking golly. My neighbors hardly ever complain about it.
I guess you could say that I’m a person who looks on the bright side.
That’s the kind of person that you need to be to enjoy The Pirate Movie, a film that’s pure cinematic Hepatitis C if you’re not looking at it through nostalgia glasses. That’s what I’ve heard, at least.
This is one of those films that’s a part of my very early, dreamy childhood memories. Those memories that exist for you in scattered pieces, but you’ve held onto them. They’re simultaneously elusive and always there.
Early 80s. Elementary school summer vacations. Cable TV at my grandparents’ house. HBO. It feels like I saw this fifty times back in the day, choosing its filmed summer sunlight over the actual summer sunlight outside.
The songs were catchy and Kristy McNichol and Christopher Atkins seemed like they’d be fun to hang out with and the whole film was constantly moving and nothing happens in it that my 6-year-old brain couldn’t process in some way.
Meanwhile, I had no idea that this was one of the WORST reviewed films of 1982. I didn’t know it was one of the bombs of the year. I didn’t know that it pretty much wrecked the film careers of its stars. I didn’t read much Roger Ebert and Vincent Canby. I’m not sure that I knew what a film critic was back then, which might be the best thing about being a kid. (I’m gradually working back to that as I get older.)
The Pirate Movie was just a thing that washed in from the tide and I found it one day and held it close because I didn’t know any better. It’s from that time in the 80s when film musicals were pretty much dead, but not everybody in Hollywood had figured that out yet, so they were still trying. For every rare hit like Fame or Annie, there were several bombs, such as Xanadu and Pennies From Heaven and The Apple and Shock Treatment.
Seeing it as an adult, okay, yeah, it’s ninety-eight minutes of total idiocy. If I was a seasoned film fan back then, I would have hated it like all the rest. The story is some garbage about an aristocrat girl (McNichol) who wants to marry a pirate boy-gone-straight (Atkins), but her father, a bigtime military General, refuses to approve of it.
UNLESS he can help the General recover a chest of valuables that he once lost to the very pirate gang that our boy just ditched. Many hi-jinks that make no sense and are just excuses for songs or for the stars to mug for the camera follow.
To the film’s credit though, it admits from the start that it’s nonsense. It begins in the present day where Kristy McNichol is a nerd girl who pines for Christopher Atkins. who’s a performer in an amusement park pirate show. Due to some moronic machinations, McNichol ends up innocently knocked unconscious in her pursuit and begins to dream the rest of the movie. This happens almost exactly eight minutes into the film and doesn’t let up until the end.
Okay, so the whole movie is a dream. It, therefore, has license to be The Stupidest Thing Ever. Works for me. I like that they’re upfront about it.
Other things I still like here: Kristy McNichol is still cute and funny. I also appreciate the racy humor. For a film that seems to be aimed at young girls, this is full of sex jokes (that flew over my head in ’83, of course).
As for the songs, I have lost many brain cells listening to the ridiculous (and not so subtly dirty) kiddie synth-pop of “Pumpin’ and Blowin'” and I don’t miss a single one of them. The McNichol-sung ballad “Hold On” is also a serious jam in this house when I need to nosh on some old 80s production cream cheese.
Some people hate the idea of a “guilty pleasure”, but I think it’s a useful term for those things that entertain you for dumb reasons that you can’t defend, let alone recommend to anyone. In that sense, I will be a fan of The Pirate Movie for the rest of my life. I didn’t ask for it. This film just happened to me. Like catching a cold.
Recommended if you like catching colds.