Pirate's Passage

I was intrigued by the synopsis of this movie and the animation reminded me of all the Don Bluth movies I watched as kid like Secret of Nimh and the American Tail films. It was mysterious and interesting enough to hold my 6, 9, and 10 year-olds, but I should have known things were going to get gritty after the first "damn" reference in the first 5 minutes.

This film is such a bizarre combination of dullness, pirate trivia and disturbing plot elements that I found myself compelled to watch it to the end in order to review it. I'm not going to explain the over-arching plot because I couldn't make much sense of it.

PIRATE'S PASSAGE, a full-length animated feature, opens with a pirate ship attack on another ship in July 1717, apparently not far from Gray Rocks, Nova Scotia. The attack is especially brutal and "without mercy", and the victim ship is scuttled with, presumably, the death of all hands.

As soon as I laid my eyes on the movie that was playing on TV, the way the characters looked like was very appealing. I was also quite impressed by how different the film was, compared to other films, in general.

This movie started off with a lot of promise. The animation is lovely at times.

We had a bunch of indie movies to check out on our Netflix watch list and I was passively thinning them out while working. I started this one and got hooked a few minutes in.

I missed the first few minutes of this animated production and focused in when I heard Donald Sutherland's voice, as I try to watch anything he has participated in. I found myself easily drawn into a simple story with some clever ideas.

I liked this movie a lot, but there were some things that I thought deserved to be explained more (e.g.