Sweet Neptune's briny pants! (These Pirates are dead funny)

I'm besotted with these new Pirates from Aardman. Although charming, Arthur Christmas lacked some of the soul of our favourite Aardman animations. Why? Well you have to start answering that question by looking at the abundance of digital pixels and the lack of plasticine.

Not so Pirates In An Adventure With Scientists! Aardman co-founder and director Peter Lord was in London recently, bringing his favourite Pirates paraphernalia with him for our perusal. He assured me that Pirates is made with the original Aardman technique of painstakingly adjusting the plasticine characters for each frame of the movie.

"I think it's good and delightful and surprising that films can still be made this old-fashioned way," begins Lord. "It's a very generous and expansive way of working."

"It's the same way we've been making films for the last thirty years or so," says the director. "It doesn't really make sense. We can create about two minutes of animation in a week."

"Wallace And Gromit was done the same way. All the characters are created in plasticine. Then we have them painted by slaves."

Laughs from assembled film journos. No-one actually raises the subject of Aardman's minions' wages. Aardman movies are funded and distributed by Sony, who initially had some reserves about the project. "Well there is another Pirates movie franchise in the ether that we shan't mention here," begins Lord. The 'unmentionable other' Pirate-related films are, he assures us, a different thing altogether.

"That's not our world," says Lord. "No-one ever actually says 'Yarrgh' in our movie. Well, actually someone does say it. But it's in an ironic way. Hugh Grant offered up this somewhat 'Pirate' west country accent when he showed up to record. I put a stop to that straight away. Part of the reason we wanted him is because he's a bit posh. And we've kept him that way."

But surely they can't have resisted the temptation to poke fun at the 'other' Pirates? "It didn't really come up. We looked at lots of Pirate movies and books. Really, it's an homage to a mythical pirate movie that doesn't exist."

Looking at the footage, which presents Grant's bumbling 'Pirate Captain' leading his crew of 'briny rogues' (including a perfectly cast Martin Freeman as 'Pirate with scarf' and a parrot that is actually a dodo) into an ill-fated attempt to win a coveted 'pirate of the year' award, it's obvious that there's nothing even slightly derivative about Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists. And these rag-tag characters and their hopeless situation that will make you laugh right deep in yer giblets. Yargh! (Sorry).

More on MSN Movies
Review: The Iron Lady
Brad Pitt interview
2012 movie preview