Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

(2011)

Do you love Dora the Explorer but always thought it needed more… you know… piracy? Disney has the answer for you and all they did was bastardize J.M. Barrie’s classic work. But it’s public domain now so we can do anything we want with it!

Swiper may try to swipe things before being booed off stage but Jake and his fellow pirates never steal anything. Really, by pirate standards, they’re pretty terrible pirates. But then, everytime they do something nice, they get awarded gold doubloons out of thin air. If that happened for me, I’m sure I’d only pretend to be a pirate too. No need to capsize East India cargo ships when you get hovering Spanish coins for helping old ladies cross the street.

Obviously this was not meant for my demographic but I gave it a sporting chance and I have to say, while I was not so stimulated nor enthusiastically participant with the numerous calls to tv interaction, I did enjoy the songs.

Written and performed by Loren Hoskins and Jeff Bennett as “Sharky” and “Bones”, these songs steal the show in my opinion. I’m not going to devote the time to watching all four seasons of this even at twice the speed. But I would be happy to listen to a playlist of these guys’ songs. Their lyrics are amazingly clever.

Corey Burton does the voice of Captain Hook in this manifestation. He comes dang close to Hans Conried who voiced Hook in 1953; so close I had to look it up to see if he was still kickin’. Hans passed away in 1982 though. It’s a tough voice to emulate. I have to say I’m impressed.

The only issue I take with the show: Jake calls his fellow pirates Popinjays. A Popinjay is defined as one who vainly chatters. That’s my thing! How dare they steal it! I thought these guys were inept pirates who didn’t steal things!?! What have these to do with vainly chattering!?! Bah!