The Pirates of Penzance Reviews

Not really a movie in the conventional sense, this is more like a very well done version of the recent live musicals from NBC. Having said that, there’s still some minor charms to be found in this filmed version of Gilbert & Sullivan’s beloved property, mostly in the form of Kevin Kline’s Errol Flynn-esque swashbuckling performance.

The story concerns Frederic (here played by pop singer Rex Smith, very handsome), a young pirate who wants to leave the life behind as his 21st birthday nears. These feelings kick into higher gear once he meets Mabel (Linda Ronstadt, vocally beautiful but sacked with a wet blanket part), but the Pirate King (Kevin Kline, deliciously hammy) has other plans for dear Frederic. That’s about it for plot, and the film is an operetta so instead of a normal musical in which the dialog pauses to break into song-and-dance, the song-and-dance pauses to include some dialog.

The Pirates of Penzance is a faithful recreation of the Broadway revival, with the only major change in creative talent being Estelle Parsons dropped in favor of Angela Lansbury. This is both a blessing and a curse, while Ronstadt and Smith deliver brilliant vocals, I can only imagine how powerful this must have sounded in-person, they’re very green as actors and the camera is unforgiving at times about this. It doesn’t help that they’re the dullest characters, not the fault of the actors as they do their best, and Kline and Lansbury run circles indulging their theatrical backgrounds to grand, high-camp effect. Kline’s performance is the real standout here, proving that in another era he could lead a production like The Adventures of Robin Hood with élan.