Arr me buckos, it's about time this page got around to reviewing a pirate movie! I've had a longin' in me bones to write a review using nothing but pirate jargon and this be... I... I better stop. The trouble is there's few things in this world as amusing as fake pirates. With their bad outfits, bad manners and a mouths full of bad teeth that slur out a peculiar form of language that nobody has ever spoken, movies pirates are a great form of cheap entertainment. Who out there hasn't occasionally dropped their normal speech pattern in order to shout and bellow like a pirate? Don't lie, I know you have. It's this sense of pirate love that Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl taps into.
I admit I didn't know what to think of Pirates when it was first announced. A movie based on a Disney theme park ride that starred -of all people- Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom? Directed by Gore Verbinski? Produced by Jeremy Bruckheimer? This is going to suck, isn't it? Surprisingly, it didn't.
Pirates is the touching story of how Will Turner [Orlando Bloom] and Elizabeth Swann [Keira Knightley] learn to show their true feelings for each other in spite of bashfulness, social standing and a boat full of screaming pirates. The story does it's best with the manidtory dashing hero and plucky heroine but in truth they're in the movie just to give the pirates someone to terrorize. Although the young couple may be the center of most of the plot points the real star of the movie is the pirate Jack Sparrow.
A large portion of good humor the movie generates is a result of Johnny Depp's turn as Captain Jack. Decked out in eyeliner, bizzare body ticks, beaded hair, and the prerequisite poofy pirate shirt, Sparrow looks like Rudolph Valentino with some sort of muscle disorder. That, or maybe he comes across like the pirate on the Captain Morgan rum bottles after he had tried too much of his own product. Sparrow is not as smart as he thinks he is but he's still smarter than the other characters give him credit for causing him to end up being the craziest trickster character to show up in popular culture since Bugs Bunny. Sparrow fops his way through every scene like he owns the place, which he more or less does. Even during the sometimes sluggish pacing of Pirates Sparrow keeps his scenes entertaining. Depp's performance is as broad as the Seven Seas but he's smart enough to remain committed to the part so Sparrow becomes an actual character even though there's nobody else in the movie's world -or any other world for that matter- like him. If you like Depp's performance it will help you get over some of the rougher sections of the movie, if you don't then watching the movie is going to feel like you're on a slow boat to China.
I knew Johnny Depp was going to turn in something worth watching but I wasn't sure about the rest of the film especially since it was being helmed by Gore Verbinski. When Verbinski's adaptation of The Ring came out I took him to task for taking a lean movie and padding it out with an extra forty minutes of gobbledygook. Verbinski still suffers from an excess of movie with Pirates going on far longer than it should. Someone needs to hire Verbinski an editor or teach him how to pace his scenes a little faster or something. At least all that extra practice behind the camera pays off since everything in Pirates is filmed in a good looking manner and doesn't suffer from unnecessary camera tricks. It seems that adapting other movies wasn't Verbinski's true calling; his actual skill lies in adapting amusement park rides.
But the reason to see Pirates isn't to see Depp out doing his thing or because Verbinski did a serviceable job even while helming a Bruckheimer production, instead it's all about the pirates. I'm sure there's a reason that pirates haven't been starring in movies lately but I would be hard pressed to think up an explanation based on their behavior in Pirates. It's one non-stop party for those who have chosen to live a pirating lifestyle. Even though the evil pirates who sail on the ship the Black Pearl toil night and day to lift the curse that haunts them they still find plenty of time to pillage and carry on, as well as to dress up their monkey. [A side note, but where did the pirates get a little pirate costume for their monkey? Did someone in the crew make the clothes? Did they find a place that sells monkey sized outfits? Was the monkey considered a member of the crew since it shared their curse as well? Perhaps I'm going off on a tangent the movie didn't mean for me to explore.] Pirates of the slightly less evil and non-cursed variety seem to have it even better. During a brief scene at a pirate haven all the pirates in attendance are either singing, drinking, wenching or punching each other out. Except for the possibility of being hung by stuffy British officials or the occasional curse there seems to be no down side to being a pirate.
Pirates succeeds by taking every pirate cliche in the world and slapping it onto the screen as well as by tapping into the nearly universal love of all things pirate. Everyone involved in the movie gets the joke and is happy to participate. Several times during the movie Captain Barbossa [Geoffrey Rush] gets to yell "Arrr!" without a hint of shame or irony. If you've ever wanted to find your inner pirate then this is the film for you. ARRR!!!
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