The A.V. Club by Nathan Rabin

The Pirate Movie suggests what Gilbert & Sullivan's original would look and sound like if it were rewritten by a boy-crazed middle-schooler who'd rather drool over John Travolta in Grease for the 50th time than suffer through anything close to opera.

The New York Times by Janet Maslin

The Pirate Movie stars Kristy McNichol and Christopher Atkins in a cut-rate kiddie version of Gilbert and Sullivan, laced with synthetic pop ballads and leavened with infantile dirty jokes.

Miami Herald

Somebody at 20th Century-Fox should have had the decency to deep-six The Pirate Movie. It stinks, but it's first. The Pirate Movie's sole accomplishment is making it to the screen before Universal's The Pirates of Penzance, thus poisoning the well for the real thing. [7 Aug 1982, p.C4]

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Jay Scott

There must be a musical somewhere in the musty vaults of movie history as bad as The Pirate Movie, but I'm at a loss to recall it - speaking comparatively, this unclean thing imparts to Can't Stop the Music and Xanadu the delicacy and charm of a moment with Fred Astaire. It makes you long for The Blue Lagoon. It encourages you to baste yourself in that masterpiece of oily ennui, Summer Lovers. It makes an evening with Kate Smith look good; hell, it makes an evening with Margaret Trudeau look good. [9 Aug 1982]

Washington Post by Gary Arnold

A blockheaded travesty that fancies itself a rollicking update of "The Pirates of Penzance."

TV Guide Magazine

Pop tunes are mixed in with some of the original G&S songs in a pirate period setting that grates on the nerves, as does the inane toilet humor that substitutes for wit. All the performers, especially McNichol, look as if they can't wait until the film is over, and one can hardly blame them.