A boy named Jimmy Warren who lives along the Massachusetts coast is upset with the unfairness of modern life when his father scolds him about his school grades.

Jimmy scoffs at the notion, but Abu insists that they are at that very moment passengers on Queen Anne's Revenge, the pirate ship of the notorious Blackbeard.

Abu refuses to grant Jimmy's wish to go home, and informs him that he must return the brass bottle to the exact spot where he found it within three days, or he will be forced to take the genie's place inside of it.

"[2] In a brief contemporary review in The New York Times, critic Howard Thompson called The Boy and the Pirates "... a standard, rather cloying little item ... it's all pretty sticky, albeit clean.

To take advantage of this, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released a Midnite Movies double feature DVD set with the rarely seen The Boy and the Pirates and the more recent Crystalstone (1987) on June 27, 2006.