The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (released overseas as The Pirates! Band of Misfits) is a 2012 stop-motion animated swashbuckler comedy film produced by the British studio Aardman Animations and the American studios Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation as their second and final collaborative project; it is Aardman's first book-based movie as well as their first stop-motion feature film since Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), and Sony Pictures Entertainment's first stop-motion film. Directed by Peter Lord, written by Gideon Defoe, based on DeFoe's 2004 novel The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (the first book from The Pirates! series), and featuring the voices of Hugh Grant, David Tennant, Imelda Staunton, Martin Freeman, Salma Hayek, and Jeremy Piven, it follows a crew of amateur pirates in their attempt to win the Pirate of the Year competition. The Pirates! was distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing and was released on 28 March 2012 in the United Kingdom, and on 27 April 2012 in the United States. The film received generally positive reviews, and was a modest box office success, earning $123 million against a budget as high as $55 million. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It was the second film from Sony Pictures Animation to be nominated after Surf's Up. Plot In London, 1837, Queen Victoria is told by the Navy that England rules the entire ocean, with the exception of pirates, whom she despises. Meanwhile, The Pirate Captain leads an unorthodox group of amateur pirates who are trying to make a name for themselves on the high seas. To prove his worth, The Captain enters the annual Pirate of the Year competition, with the winner being whoever can plunder the most treasure. After several failed attempts to plunder mundane ships, they come across HMS Beagle and capture its lone passenger, Charles Darwin, who recognizes the crew's pet "parrot", Polly, as the last living dodo bird. Darwin recommends that they enter Polly in the Scientist of the Year competition at the Royal Society of London, and The Captain accepts, believing that winning the competition can help him win the Pirate of the Year award, despite his assistant, The Pirate with the scarf, advising him not to. Allowing The Pirate Captain and his crew to stay at his house for the night, Darwin plans to steal Polly for himself in order to impress Queen Victoria, whom he's smitten with.