The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie
The gentle but sharp low-tech wit of the "Veggie Tales" kid videos is reflected in the title of the franchise's latest installment. "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" - it tickles me just to type that. The movie's much the same: simple without being simple-minded, warm without worrying too much about being cool. It's agreeably silly fare for the very small set and not so noisy that parents can't either follow along or take a quick nap.
If you're unfamiliar with the Veggie Tales universe, it's a shiny, cheap-around-the-edges computer-animated world where your pals from the produce aisle have cartoon faces and goofball personalities. (But no hands. And don't ask the filmmakers how the characters pick things up, since they don't seem to know either. Stuff just magically floats.)
The title characters of "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" are a gourd, a grape, and a cucumber. Respectively: lazy Sedgewick (voiced by writer and "Veggie Tales" co-creator Phil Vischer), wimpy George (Vischer again), and fraidy-cat Elliot (director/co-creator Mike Nawrocki). Waiters at a pirate-themed dinner theater - what do vegetables eat? other vegetables? meat? - they're magically transported into the past by a princess (Laura Gerow) to save her brother (Yuri Lowenthal) from their nasty pirate uncle (Cam Clarke), who may or may not be a turnip.
In the process, our heroes learn they are heroes, as capable of acts of bravery as those without self-esteem or shelf-spoilage issues. They also run into some cleverly bizarre critters along the way: A gang of tiny hostile Cheese-Puffs with teeth and a family of galumphing rock-monsters are the best. (The latter lead to a funny reworking of "Rock Lobster" under the end credits.) It's the rare family cartoon that's wry and smart without feeling the need to brag about it: small potatoes in the best sense.
Long-time "VT" fans may notice something else missing: God. The original vid series and 2002's "Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie" incorporated low-key moral lessons from the Old and New Testaments (among other sources), but Nawrocki and Vischer never seemed very interested in the evangelical hard-sell. (The videos are no more Jesus-y than the old "Davey and Goliath" show on Sunday mornings when I was a kid: light entertainment and golden-rule homilies for all Judeo-Christian households.)
"The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" is notably secular - well, there's a speech by the king toward the end that might metaphorically refer to a Higher Power, but it'd take a theologian to pluck it out - and it may reflect some corporate streamlining. In 2003, the "Veggie Tales" company was rescued from bankruptcy by Classic Media Holdings, which last year was swallowed by the UK-based Entertainment Rights, the latter's focus being, in the words of Wikipedia, "the exploitation of major children's characters and brands." "Pirates" retains the scruffy, slap-happy gooniness that makes the "Veggie Tales" videos go down easy, but is the franchise in danger of being pureed into blandness? Beets me.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog.
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