Trailer—The Pirate Movie

That this film gets bombed the way it does angers me. The slamming it's gotten is just unwarranted! I like it a lot- it's a musical farce, so why SHOULDN'T it contain parody lyrics of the great Gilbert and Sullivan? The same people who hate it for that reason are very likely the sort of people who bust a gut laughing at the parody lyrics of musicals as penned in MAD Magazine™ by Frank Jacobs. What's the difference so long as it entertains? I hate the fact that this did so poorly at the box office and impacted lovely Kristy McNichol's and gorgeous Chris Atkins's careers as negatively as it did. I think it was an excellent film for what it set out to do! It simply was too good a film to be trashed and ignored as it was!

Found the movie while searching youtube for something to watch. the dance numbers and singing make this super cheesy and I love it. from the cast and Ruth just being there for comedic value its everything you want

This is one of the movies that still stands out as the perfect example of the movies that was the eighties. It was wonderful and it is still as fun now as it was so many years ago. It's greatest testament is time; how long and how well it has endured. There will always be people (cynics from the 90's) that only measure a movie by the dollars and cents that it made in a certain time span. This movie is over twenty years old and still is that good. The academy awards gave 'million dollar baby' an academy award for best picture; let's see how good it endures twenty years from now! Political correctness is not necessarily that main test of how good a movie is. Like Ghostbusters and Goonies, a must see for movie enthusiasts who LOVED the eighties as much as I and many others do, that want to be entertained by movies and not judge a movie simply on how much dollars a certain movie makes or its political correctness.

Rented this over and over as a kid and had to buy it. Love the cheesy story of a romantic feminist!

A wallflower is tossed into the sea and dreams herself into a pirate fantasy as a damsel in love with a pirate's apprentice. Energetic and good-natured, perhaps, but a shoddy enterprise; a failed musical send-up of "The Pirates of Penzance" with a cheap, backlot feel, wan bubblegum songs and constant, leering overacting. Kristy McNichol's film career took a real hit after this, while leading man Christopher Atkins cannot get a grip of any particular emotion, his voice wobbling about in search of an appropriate tone. You have to wonder, if that's the best title they could come up with, what's the level of wit going to be in the actual script? The movie's "Grease"-like affection for musicals doesn't gel with its penchant for slapstick a la "Airplane!", although McNichol works overtime being effervescent and nearly makes the limp handling look endearing. For the most part, it is an embarrassment. *1/2 from ****

I still have my VHS tape and have watched it 100s of times over the years. I need this to come out on demand, please! I cannot remember the last time I even owned a VHS player to watch this.

Perhaps it is nostalgia, or perhaps it is because I have my set of like when it comes to movies, but I have always loves this one. This is the story within a story of a young man, born on a leap day that is forced to remain a pirate until his actual 21st birthday. He falls for the daughter of a Major General and is caught between honor and love. That synopsis sounds way more serious that the movie actually is. This is a movie/musical version of The Pirates of Penzance. It is fun, filled with great songs and plenty of PG rated action. This movie seems to be receiving a lot of hate on here, and I have no idea why. Each movie must be weighed on its own merits. One cannot compare this to say, Citizen Kane, they are no where near the same. Can one like this as much, or more than that, of course.

Anyone rating this less than 7 clearly doesn't understand the film at all. When Gilbert & Sullivan first wrote The Pirates of Penzance in the late 1800's, they were writing it in satire of the operatic idiom. If the film's title wasn't enough of a clue in itself, The Pirate Movie is a satire of the sort of musical adventure cinema we were seeing in the 70's and early 80's (see Grease, Xanadu, The Wiz, Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, Man of La Mancha, Rock & Roll High School... the list goes on!). Also, it was just meant to be a lot of fun. If you are going in, expecting something with the musical mastery of West Side Story, The Phantom of the Opera or Les Miserables, you are looking in the wrong place. If a film that could be the lovechild of The Goonies and ABBA sounds intriguing, then you are going to have a blast! So put away your critic's notepad, pop some corn and enjoy!