A Pirate Movie Kids Can See

This weekend we finally were able to see The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything Movie. It was a nice way to spend a Sunday together, but certainly not the best Veggie Tales to date. Honestly, it was only okay, not bad, not great, but okay. Sure, it had all the usual Veggie Tale characters, and the wholesomeness of Veggie Tales, but something lacked. It lacked God.

We live very near to where the Big Idea Studios used to be, we knew people who worked there, and we witnessed the legal battles that caused them to lose everything, so we understand how hard it’s been. We know that changing Veggie Tales for TV, omitting God, was not their idea. This movie was a big production from a major film studio, I’m sure there were many negotiations involving how to make the message more mainstream. It was the old message that made us love Bob and Larry, even before we had kids.

The movie starts out in modern times, and through the magic of a “help ball” Larry, Pa Grape and Mr. Lunt are thrown back into the 1700’s. They are given a quest, that at the beginning they do not feel they are up to. As the film progresses, they realize they do have the courage and strength to be heroes, despite what their lives in modern times might indicate. That is pretty much it, not too complex, but sweet.

There were so many times I wished for them to say “God is the source of our Strength” or even the cliché “God made you and he loves you very much” as they say at the end of all the DVD’s, but it never happened. There was nothing wrong with the message, but it lacked clarity for the kiddies.

In our family, the under 7 population loved it, the over 7 population was bored. I think it is still worth seeing, but wait till the DVD comes out or see it at a second run theatre. It is still nice to see films that the whole family can go to, they get rarer and rarer. It was a nice escape for us from the ever falling snow.