Movie Journals |
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Pirates of the Caribbean
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Pirates of the Caribbean
I have now seen the Pirates of the Caribbean (143 minutes running time) twice and am so pirate crazy that I would eagerly see it again. Perhaps my renewed lust for Johnny Depp (I haven’t thought about much since the 80’s) is what drives me to give up my mortgage and Toyota Camry and trade my suburban life in for an adventure of pillaging and plundering. Aside from its excellent casting (please excuse my bias), Pirates does a good job of hooking the audience from the beginning. The opening scenes of a little girl on a huge ship lightly singing the “Yo Ho” pirate’s song, spotting an attacked and destroyed ship, and realizing the boy pulled from the water is a pirate are intriguing.
Following a good start, the first plot point comes at about sixteen minutes into the film. Elizabeth falls from a cliff into the ocean and Jack Sparrow (pirate extraordinaire) comes to her rescue. By this point in the movie, most of the main characters are introduced, and the bad guy, Barbosa, is alluded to when the ocean sends off a sonic boom-type sound. By this point, the audience has a good idea of who’s in love with whom and what the setup of the story is.
With the setup complete and many obstacles overcome, the second plot point comes after about ninety-one minutes. At this point Wil, by only an act of God I assume, makes and astonishing recovery from nearly drowning and then nearly dying in an exploding ship. Surviving the blast and boarding the Black Pearl from the depths of the ocean, he is barely scathed, barely wet even. The beacon of this plot point is clear even in the deepest of murky fogs, with wide shots, zooms, smart one-liners, and heroic stances galore.
But who cares about Wil anyway? Back to Jack Sparrow. He’s the real reason to see the movie. His character is quirky enough to keep an audience guessing and real enough to keep an audience believing. He’s the reason that even at two hours and twenty-three minutes, this movie is entertaining enough to see twice.
Karen Walker 29 September 2003 |