First off, this isn’t a VeggiTales video stretched to movie-length like Jonah (sorry, I wouldn’t see it twice of my own volition).

The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything is a fairly well thought out story designed for the medium it is presented in.

This is good news both for the longevity of the movie as a piece of entertainment and for the parents who will (inevitably) share quite a bit of “quantity time” with this and their kids.

The bad news about this is mostly for the parents of preschoolers, like me.

This is a know-your-kid movie, which, unfortunately, didn’t come out in the normal reviews I read.

My 5-year-old cried more than once, and both she and her (differently sensitive) sister hid their faces multiple times. It is intense at the modern feature-length cartoon level.

For my kids, that means I would have waited till the 6-8 range, rather than the 3-5 we are in right now.

Of course everything turns out alright in the end, but the “moments of peril” aren’t all that brief, and occur frequently.

This is fine storytelling, but (like I’ve said before) I think movies of this intensity are harder on little kids than books of equal intensity— due to the extra, visual, element. There’s no time to process and detox from the last moment of peril before being steamrolled by the next one.

This was especially true for our oldest. She was clingy and needy for the hour or so after the show ended. My good husband helped both girls “detox” by talking about his “favorite parts” of the movie.

At first Natasha said that nothing was her favorite, but then we began to recap some events and she began to participate, even though she never agreed to actually liking anything.

She seemed very interested in what my favorite moments were, and as I was juggling tense girls most of the time I wasn’t particularly aware of my feelings past the opening sword fight. Which was fine, so I said I liked that and something else I couldn’t remember.

Natasha asked two or three more times what my other moment was, so I eventually thought of something else. This is one of the first times she’s really wanted to know what others think.

For future reference I think I will be going even to G shows before I take my kids– no matter what the reviews say.

(And, no, they will not be coming with us to Narnia in May. This I know already.)