Jolly Roger (1999)

I know, the animation isn’t really anything like “Captain Pugwash”, but that was all I could really compare this with to as it tells us a seafaring yarn with one obvious message. A woman is captured by pirates and promptly made to walk the plank. They all then proveed to get legless on rum and fall asleep. Meantime, a smaller ship is sailing nearby crewed by a captain, an enormous great sailor (think “Bluto”) and a cat. This skipper is not the bravest man on deck, but when he realises his would-be foes are all out for the count and the he espies a treasure chest, he takes advantage of the situation and is soon racing away with the box. Before he can get too far, though, his burly mate rescues the woman from the sea and then, just as quickly they meet up with the pirates again and she manages to wreak havoc all round. That moral? Well, just never pick up drowning women from the sea, of course! The animation is really quite linear and basic and the tri-coloured parrot just looks like a clothes peg with a stumpy feather attached, but the score is suitably jolly and I quite liked the imponderable nature of the conclusion. Sink or swim, eh? Watchable, but you’ll probably never remember it.