Film Review: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL *** (out of 5)
“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
A curséd band of artfully tattered, mutinous rapscallions scours the Caribbean in search of a lost medallion, while their former captain is in…let’s just say, casual pursuit.
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 the best Spielberg action romps, 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 the air was, you know, cool.
But, there was also something quasi-hallucinogenic and charming about Pirates of the Caribbean: The Ride that a movie would have trouble reproducing. The popularity of such Disneyland/Disney World attractions endures because they are close to the theatre of puppetry, they’re 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 havin’ 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 — Treasure Island (1950) or 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. And 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 Anglo actor’s 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 is especially good at it in spite of being an American, 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 was very, very cold inside, like a walk-in freezer. I didn’t want to leave.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
directed by Gore Verbinski; screenplay by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, from story by Elliott & Rossio and Stuart Beattie and Jay Wolpert; director of photography, Danusz Wolski; edited by Stephen Rivkin, Arthur Schmidt, Craig Wood; music by Klaus Badelt
with: Johnny Depp (Jack Sparrow), Geoffrey Rush (Barbossa), Orlando Bloom (Will Turner), Keira Knightly (Elizabeth Swann)
2 hr., 23 m.; A Walt Disney Pictures - Jerry Bruckheimer production, Buena Vista, rated PG-13
release date: July 9
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. Cheers.
Eric Barker is a writer and independent filmmaker living in Denver.
