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).
