Pirates of the Carribbean

ByThe Plaid Adder
Comments:plaidder@mindspring.com

I saw this on an airplane, so I perhaps wasn't getting its full glory. However, I have to say that I don't find it lived up to the hype generated in the fan community. Yes, Johnny Depp is carrying that film, and most of the time his Captain Sparrow is fun to watch. Yes, there's some good writing and funny moments, and yes, if you have to have a damsel in distress, it may as well be a pirate trapped in a damsel's body (and a damsel's corset). Nevertheless, my interest flagged fairly often, and if I hadn't been trapped on a plane with nothing to read I probably wouldn't have made it to the end.

Probably some of my crankiness comes from knowing that Disney made this movie just to generate more interest in the otherwise pointless "Pirates of the carribbean" ride at Disneyworld (or is it Disneyland, I can never keep that straight). And since I remember that ride pretty well from my first ever trip to Disneyland/world, I could spot the visual echoes, which annoyed me further. In general, I am against allowing the tie-ins to generate the movie (this year's Haunted Mansion is apparently proving me right) and I think that although this film did get beyond the initial premise fairly successfully, I also think that its major problem from a silliness standpoint was also inspired by the ride, and I'm talking about Captain Barbossa and his gang of fighting undead. I'm pretty sure I remember our flume moving slowly past some rag-draped animatronic skeletons swinging steins, and they appear to have pretty much become the major motif for the film. The idea, see, is that Captain Barbossa and his gang of mutineers were cursed when they messed with a chest of Aztec gold pieces, with the result that they are all undead. Under normal circumstances they look just like regular pirates, but in the moonlight they become "what we really are," which is apparently skeletons with some bits of decomposing flesh and rotting clothes draping them. Scary the first time you see it, but when a platoon of these skeletons are engaged in hand to hand combat with a full ship's crew of redcoats, it starts to get ridiculous. Plus, you keep wondering why people persist on trying to kill them even after it's clear that it doesn't work.

Speaking of trying to kill the undead...well, not to get into spoiler territory, but the film is majorly inconsistent about how this curse actually works, and not in an unobtrusive way that only the geeky would notice, either. Basically, one of the main characters ends up alive when he really ought to be dead, for no other reason than that the film doesn't want him dead.

As I said, Depp's Sparrow takes pirate camp to new heights, and he keeps you interested because you never know what nutty thing he's going to do next. Geoffrey Rush's Captain Barbossa is a perfectly serviceable villain, although he's trying to discover depths in his character and predicament that the movie around him just won't allow him to reach. As Jack Turner, Orlando Bloom is supposed to be painfully straight, but from my point of view that doesn't make him any less painful. Watching his big swordfights just made me wish I had a VCR and my tape of The Princess Bride handy so I could watch Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin instead.

I was amused to see the actor who played Pitt the Younger on Blackadder III turn up much older with a deeper voice but similar snottiness as Elizabeth's anal naval-commander suitor, and annoyed to see Jonathan Pryce, a great actor who I really like, turned into an idiot/coward/cheese-bearing purveyor of implausibly happy endings. But since it kept me entertained on a long flight with turbulence, I should stop bitching and just be glad I didn't have to see Seabiscuit again.

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