I'm torn on this one. On one hand, it's Gilbert and Sullivan so it's gotta have some value. On the other, I didn't know the lyrics as I'd never seen it before and there were a lot of times I had no idea what they were saying as ensembles would sing over each other which doesn't translate well to a film. I dig fix this about halfway through, however, when I turned on subtitles which helped me dramatically!
The story was the typical, boy is pirate, boy leaves piracy, boy meets girl, boy rejoins pirates, pirates aren't pirates story. You hear it so many times < sarcasm >.
This one starred Kevin Kline as the Pirate King, Angela Lansbury as Ruth, and Linda Ronstadt as Mabel. The other two main characters, Frederic and the Major General, I didn't know. All of them did good in their respective roles. I think I liked Lansbury the best though because she had a pretty funny character.
One thing is for certain, Gilbert and Sullivan did everything they could to make the singing roles difficult for the actors! They certainly like to have songs that are incredibly fast. I think even the Micro Machine guy would have problems with these! The biggest example is the most commonly known song (and the only one I knew going into this) about the Modern Major General. When he speeds it up double-time at the end it was crazy!
Overall I enjoyed it but I wish I had turned on the closed-captioning far earlier in the film. Once I did I had a much better time as I could tell what was going on.
I will recommend this but only with closed-captioning if you've never seen or heard it before.
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