Review Summary

You don’t have to go far into the press material for “The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie” before you hit the phrase “faith-and-values-based property.” It is used to describe this and earlier offerings from the VeggieTales franchise, but the “faith” component of this rather ordinary film for children doesn’t make itself readily apparent. Perhaps it’s faith in the notion that if you appropriate chunks of a cinematic classic — in this case “The Wizard of Oz” — your tale will be elevated to classic status too. Perhaps it’s faith in the marketing strategy of borrowing the signature word from the title of someone else’s very popular trilogy and hoping people will turn up at your film thinking that Johnny Depp is providing the voices. Alas, he is not. — Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times