Brilliant and touching

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons. Actually appreciate it even more through young adults eyes, due to having more knowledge of it, various animation styles, studios, directors and how it all works.'Poultry Pirates' is not one of Friz Freleng's best cartoons by any stretch, in an uneven "still evolving" period of his long career, and he was yet to be in his full prime and not yet found his style properly. For a relatively early effort, 'Poultry Pirates' is average but not great or a Freleng classic, he would do much better later. It is never what one would call hilarious (but is never unfunny), Freleng's later efforts show more evenness and confidence in directing and the story is flimsy. It is very predictable and thin story-wise and generally could have had more oomph, which would have been solved if the cartoon was a little shorter. 'Poultry Pirates' does feel routine and there aren't enough gags that are funny, a big problem for a gag heavy cartoon where the structure is basically an excuse to string them along. A few amusing moments but it's hardly laugh-a-minute and nothing is hilarious.However, the poultry and the captain are fun characters and the chemistry between the characters elevates 'Poultry Pirates'.The cartoon has amusing moments and there is some liveliness, though generally it was one that could have done with more oomph.Animation is excellent, it's fluid in movement, crisp in shading and very meticulous in detail. The music is lovely on the ears, lushly orchestrated, full of lively energy and characterful in rhythm, not only adding to the action but also enhancing it. The voice acting from Billy Bletcher is terrific and full of character.In summation, average and unexceptional but far from a waste. 5/10 Bethany Cox

. . . was probably thrown together by a crew of once or future serial killers, since forensic psychology says most animal abusers soon "graduate" to human sex-slayings. A fat bozo dubbed "The Captain" beats some hens with a thick board, then falls asleep. He dreams of giving a tiny chick a spanking on its plucked-bare backside, then getting beaten up himself by the chick's featherless, tattooed 6-foot-6 rooster protector. When the Captain wakes up, the baby chicken is kicking dirt on the Captain (apparently because the chick fell asleep at the same time as the man did, and Dreamt the SAME dream!). If all of this sounds pretty messed up, POULTRY PIRATES is actually a lot more perverse and incoherent than I can describe in the space available here. Viewers half expect John Wayne Gacy to pop in wearing one of his Killer Klown suits, since this "entertainment" is THAT off-kilter and wrong-headed. It was films like this that probably gave the Japanese their idea that they could get away with that infamous Sneak Attack on Pearl Harbor a few years after POULTRY PIRATES was released.

By 1937, Friz Freleng had spent a few years directing Merrie Melodies at Warner Bros. That was when MGM offered him a more lucrative deal to direct the "Captain and the Kids" series, based on a comic strip. Apparently, the series proved to not be very popular, so MGM canceled it after about two years (after which Friz returned to WB).So, "Poultry Pirates" is the first cartoon in this series that I've seen. Pretty lame. Basically a litany of gags in which a gaggle of hungry chickens - and one Rambo-like rooster - humiliate the Captain to get to his garden, I can see why nothing much became of the series. I believe that I speak for most people when I say that Friz's WB work will be that for which he's remembered.

The best entries in the "Captain and the Kids" series are the ones that mine humor from the Dirks strip's basic concept - the kids tormenting the captain. Director Freleng did not like the idea of adapting the Katzenjammers to animation, but proceeded by order of producer Fred Quimby. "Poultry Pirates" is one of four cartoons in the series in which the kids do not appear at all. In fact, the only regular in sight is the Captain, and he's stuck with a recycled Porky Pig script in which he has to chase the neighbor's chickens out of his garden. Pretty routine business, although it does get amusing toward the climax where Der Cap goes to the mat with a giant, muscle-bound rooster. If there's any moral to this, I guess it would be "Don't feed your poultry steroids".