The Pirates of Penzance

This 1983 film brings Joseph Papp's Broadway staging of Gilbert and Sullivan's 1879 operetta to the screen, with the stage director Wilford Leach directing the film as well. Frederic was apprenticed to pirates by mistake as a child; at twenty-one his indenture ends and he happily leaves them. Then he falls for Mabel, and a legal joke turning on his birthday falling in a leap year undoes everything. The film keeps the broad, deliberately artificial air of the stage production and never hides that the sets are sets. Kevin Kline's Pirate King continues the performance that won him a Tony on Broadway. Linda Ronstadt and Angela Lansbury fill out the cast. Who it's for: viewers who enjoy operetta, Gilbert and Sullivan, and musical adaptations that keep their stage energy. Who it's not for: anyone expecting cinematic realism; the film behaves like a stage show from beginning to end.