Piratas en el Callao

Even though it was at the time the first ever Peruvian computer animation movie it wasn't enjoyable even if you have low standards before watching it.

Being a simple story you only have to sit thru less than an hour and a half but feels like forever. There's no character development, even if the main characters are 12 years old, no movie structure at all because you get scenes that have no connection with the plot, terrible child-like writing, awful voice performances (specially the one from the dutch pirate if you watch it in Spanish) and let's not forget the terrible 3D animation of the film overall making it unpleasant to watch; all you get are basic frames with colorfulness and static backgrounds, weird body parts movement by the characters that hasn't aged well.

Don't waste your time with this peruvian cinema experiment because is not worth it.

The story of Piratas en el Callao is simple. A little boy get lost while he is touring a colonial fortress at Callao, the main port of Peru, and then he falls through a time hole back to 17th century when the port was under siege by dutch pirate Jacques L'Hermite. He meets friends and will try to make a difference defending the city.

While the story could sound interesting for people who were kids back in the sixties (the time when the boy is supposed he got lost and also a time when the writer of the original story was a boy too), nowadays it takes more than that to wow the audience, and specially k12 kids. Even so the movie succeeds at making the youngest laugh, while the bigger ones try to imagine the making of such a meritorious effort.

Because Peru doesn't have an animation industry. Not even the producers did have access to high end animation tools common in Hollywood like motion capture or procedural animation systems for clothing, hair, or sea simulations. But they did have the guts to start that industry with this movie, and it looks like they have the talent and the willing to match the standards of its American animated features counterparts as time goes by. Good news for them is that they didn't need such an arms collection to enter the Chinese market, as the movie will make it in China at the end of this year. If you're a Peruvian you should support this remarkable effort. If you're not and you manage to see it, maybe you'll be watching the born of a brand new world-wide power in animation. Who knows? :)

"Piratas en el Callao" is distributed outside Peru as "Piratas en el Pacífico" (Pirates at Pacific).

Piratas en el Callao was a novel from Peruvian writer Herman Garrido. The novel tells about a kid who has an adventure in a time machine. The kid goes the past, and found himself in a Peruvian historic fact, 'el combate del 2 de mayo' (May 2nd Battle).

I read the novel last year. The text is exactly as it's in the movie, both products are really poor. The novel is not linked, not clear, there's no structure, no good dialogs. Is too simple and empty.

The 3d movie is worst. Looks like a video game. They use the same textures from the software, they didn't work in new rendering effects, neither quality work. The character design is very simple and nothing unusual.The water effect is really basic and poor. The woods and sand textures are a software default pattern.

Well It was a Peruvian first try, let's give them an opportunity to show something different in the future,

The most notable asset of 'Pirates in Callao' is that it marked a first in Peru as the first Peruvian computer animation. For a first effort 'Pirates in Callao' certainly could have been far worse and of the Eduardo Schult-directed animations it is by quite some way the best (the others seen are 'Fantastic Force', aka 'The Illusionauts', and 'The Dolphin: Story of a Dreamer', both awful).

With that being said, 'Pirates in Callao', when seeing it online in Spanish, is still not a good film. Credit is due for sticking to its roots and including some interesting South American history and heritage, some knowledge of it may help and it will go over the heads of some but to me it was actually pretty interesting. The music was not as discordant as expected and is far more dynamic than that for 'The Dolphin: Story of a Dreamer', and there is the odd nice colour.

However, most of the animation is really not great, though it is more forgivable than the far cheaper looks of 'Fantastic Force' and especially 'The Dolphin: Story of a Dreamer' because it was a first effort. On the most part, cheap video games from the 90s look better and more refined, most of the colouring is flat and dull, the characters are plastic and look stiff and unnatural within their surroundings, the backgrounds are static and sparse in detail and the attention to detail is at best sloppy.

Apart from a few intriguing moments with the history, the writing is poor, clunking even more than when cutlery falls on a tiled floor and many parts sound awkward and childish. The story is a dull, block of thin ice-flimsy and over-stuffed mess, like being cooked a sloppily put together dinner that looks unappetising and underwhelms in taste. Interesting idea, and doesn't have as big target audience problems as Schult's other animations (especially 'The Dolphin: Story of a Dreamer') but executed in a way that runs out of puff far too early.

It has a less than cracking or lively pace (often too dull and stretched) and contains too many been there done that ideas jumped to with not much rhythm or reason constantly and tossed together in a un-tantalising jumble. Saw no need for the romance, which may creep some out, or the ending dance party sequence which epitomised running out of ideas. 'Pirates in Callao' is a very short length but the story really struggles to fill it.

Characters are bland and the voice acting is at best uninspired.

Overall, very ho hum and not much fun. 3/10 Bethany Cox