Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Review
by : Eric Barker
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Starring:
Johnny Depp (Jack Sparrow), Geoffrey Rush
(Barbossa), Orlando Bloom (Will Turner), Keira Knightly
(Elizabeth Swann)
Written by: Ted Elliott & Terry
Rossio, from a story by Elliott & Rossio, Stuart
Beattie and Jay Wolpert
Produced by: Jerry Bruckheimer
Directed by: Gore Verbinski
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A curséd band of artfully tattered, mutinous
rapscallions scour the Caribbean in search of a lost medallion,
while their former captain is in, let’s just say, casual
pursuit.
“The
Pirate’s Code is more of a set of what you’d call
‘guidelines’ than actual rules.”
-- Geoffrey
Rush, as the double-villainous Barbossa
Going
into the Disney-Bruckheimer Pirates of the Caribbean:
And So On and So Forth, a $125 million extravaganza filled
to the brim with cheeky anachronisms and some really fun visual
effects, the foremost concerns on my mind were to get out
of the intolerable oven of my apartment, in which I had been
baking all weekend, and to see a mindless movie. As the Grail
Knight of Spielberg’s Last Crusade (1989) would
say, I chose...wisely.
Not that
Pirates of the Caribbean is on a par with a good
Spielberg action romp, but for a movie based on a theme park
ride (a friggin’ THEME PARK RIDE!!), it’s not
half-bad. Energetic, ballsy (who the HECK makes movies based
on theme park rides? Oh yes, half of Hollywood, right, nevermind..),
vaguely unpredictable, committed to a good show and unafraid
of being a farce. Just in case, I suppose.
The sad
thing about Pirates is that it will encourage more of the
same. The film is just blindsiding everyone else at the box-office
right now, all the summer sequels and those unlucky, July
indie releases that only three people want to see, so it’s
the wave of the future. As long as Bruckheimer can get Johnny
Depp and Geoffrey Rush to return.
Okay,
I’ll admit it: I’m a big fan of the ride, okay?
I saw
the original, mind you, at Disneyland (you know, the smaller
one), and the only thing in the Magic Kingdom I enjoyed more
was The Haunted Mansion. So, you could call me a connoisseur,
an aficionado, I know all the bends in the canal, all the
animatrons. One thing I always liked about that ride, it was
very cool, that is, compared to other Disneyland attractions.
You rode down into this underground cave and it was dark and,
you know, cool.
But, there
was also something quasi-hallucinogenic and charming about
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Ride which a movie would have
trouble reproducing. The popularity of such Disneyland/Disney
World attractions endures because they are close to the theatre
of puppetry, something almost new, the audience drifting past
a series of comic tableaux designed and written by some witty
guys who appear to’ve seen a lot of old pirate movies
and are having some good clean fun, tossing in a bawdy wink
at Mom and Dad here and there (mostly Dad).
No narrative,
just a lot of well-executed jokes on the whole idea of pirates
that holds up for more than one pass, if you don‘t go
too often. Aesthetically, it’s similar to one of the
early Disney live-action cartoons, say, Treasure Island
(1950)? 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)? Weird,
too, because those films were adopting the aesthetic of a
very specific type of cartoon (Disney), which mimicked the
visual composition, movement and editing of live action films,
applying them to animation, and now the mash was being distilled
anew, as a big budget puppet spectacular, and fashioned even
more consciously like a wry Disney cartoon come to life.
Oh, shoot,
why not make it into a film? The wonder is no one has thought
of it before now. Which brings me to Pirates of the Caribbean:
The Latest Movie With an Unnecessary Subtitle, just possibly
the finest film producer Jerry Bruckheimer has ever made.
I mean that, and in the nicest way, really.
How do
you make a live action film based on a renowned, hyperreal
puppet show that borrows the texture of a live action cartoon?
First, you hire Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, the extremely
funny scribes with-no-particular-studio-affiliation, who hammered
out the incessant, crowd-pleasing wise cracks of Aladdin
(Disney, 1992) and Shrek (DreamWorks, 2001), their
two greatest successes, and you say, “Have at it, lads.
And write a nice role for Mr. Depp, eh? And for Mr. Rush,
too.”
And then
you turn Mr. Depp and Mr. Rush loose on the jokes, and about
$100 million worth of Disney effects and sets and stunts,
and you’ve got yourself an entertainment! Of course,
the action scenes go on long past their welcome, but that
was a given in our age of Super-Sized excess and stuff. Don’t
go if you don’t like action scenes. Or special effects.
Mr. Rush
has that marvelous British knack for singing and/or growling
the most innocuous lines of dialogue into yielding their submerged
character and wit, and so does Mr. Depp, who isn’t even
British, and who hasn’t been this funny since Don
Juan DeMarco (1995). He does a wonderful High-Seas-Cockney-Via-Disneyland
in this film, while turning his sometime comic walk from past
drug scenes into the film’s best schtick, weaving like
an animatron broken loose from his place in the diorama and
looking for better action. Over-the-top just looks good on
some people, advice Orlando Bloom might do well to heed: his
best moment in the film comes when he imitates Johnny Depp,
an unscripted bit he tossed out with producer Bruckheimer‘s
blessing..
Otherwise,
everyone else, even champion scene-stealer Jonathan Pryce,
is just furniture in the Johnny-and-Geoffrey Show. Even the
PG-13 scares, which are more than a little reminiscent of
The Haunted Mansion, are mere filler until the next Deppian
pratfall.
Which
is just fine: when stacking my experience of the Disneyland
Pirates against the film, I have to say, I didn’t particularly
yearn for my money back. As Donald O’Connor once sang,
“...you can charm the critics and have nothing to eat
/ Just slip on a banana peel, the world’s at your feet...”
And that
theatre I went to was very, very cold inside, like a walk-in
freezer. I didn’t want to leave.
Notes:
Previous
films by hot director Gore Verbinski: Mouse Hunt
(1997), The Mexican (2001) and The Ring
(2002).
Best script
by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio to date: The Mask of
Zorro (1997).
Another
“film version” of a Disney animatronic attraction,
The Haunted Mansion, starring Eddie Murphy, is due
to be released at Thanksgiving. And so it goes.
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