The Best Pirate Film I Saw That Week (Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl (DVD))

Member Name: plipplop

Product:	Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl (DVD)
Date:	22/12/06 (173 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good visual effects, sense of fun

Disadvantages: Irritating characters, far too long, completely over Disney - fied

Every so often a film comes along that everyone seems to rave about. I originally attended an advanced screening of this movie in 2003 and the cinema was completely packed. The press had raved and raved about it, every reviewer online seemed to have loved it and within the space of a few weeks, the film had moved into the top 250 films of all time on the Internet Movie Database. I really couldn’t fathom what on earth was going on. I couldn’t see what the fuss was all about. But I was very pleased to be writing this review because once again I got to savage something that everyone else loves.

Elizabeth Swann, the daughter of an English nobleman has something of a fascination with pirates. As a small girl, she is aboard her father’s military ship when they come across the wreck of another ship, left in pieces after a vicious attack by pirates. Only one survivor remains - a young boy named Will Turner who is lifted from the water and given safe passage back to shore. Unbeknown to the rest of the crew, Will has a strange gold coin on a chain around his neck, which Elizabeth quickly conceals about her person for fear that her father will suspect Will of being a pirate. As the crew of the ship hurries about making a quick exit from the area, Elizabeth spots a mysterious craft disappearing into the fog – the only clue to it’s crew’s identity is the Jolly Roger flag hoisted atop its mast.

Years later, Elizabeth has grown into a young lady and Will works as a blacksmith in the harbourside town. Her father has designs that she should accept the marriage proposal of a military officer named Norrington, but whilst discussing the delicate matter with Norrington on a cliffside battlement she becomes overcome with heat and plunges into the water below. Her unlikely saviour is a strange young man known as Jack Sparrow, who is caught by two of Norrington’s men trying to conceal himself aboard one of the ships. But there is no gratitude for Sparrow who finds himself imprisoned under charges of piracy.

That night, as the town settles down to sleep a mysterious craft draws into the harbour. The Black Pearl has arrived, summoned by the presence of the coin around Elizabeth’s neck as she floated in the water. The town soon finds itself under devastating attack and despite her best efforts to thwart capture, Elizabeth finds herself in front of the Black pearl’s captain, a despicable pirate known only as Barbosa. But Elizabeth is little prepared for the secrets that Barbosa and his men possess – and it is only when the light from the moon shines down upon them that the girl realises her peril. An unlikely alliance must be formed if Barbosa and his men are to be stopped from completing their evil mission.

Where does one start with a film like this? It’s probably easier if I start with the positives.

Pirates of the Caribbean is a fast-paced, lively action film that does its very best to entertain everybody in the audience. Visually, it is very impressive and has a certain quirky edge to it quite unlike anything that I’ve ever really seen before. If I had to compare it to another recent cinema success then I would say that it is rather like the horror/comedy/adventure that we last saw in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. The special effects were very accomplished – there are scenes where some of the characters partly switch from being human to being “something else” and these are extremely effective. The leader of the pirates, Barbosa, is suitably wicked and provides a fine villain in keeping with Dr Hook from the Peter Pan film. Orlando Bloom isn’t without his appeal, looking rather like a young David Beckham and you could never say that Keira Knightley doesn’t look the part of the beautiful damsel in distress.

But that’s probably about as far as I’m prepared to go with the praise. The fact of the matter is that despite the visuals and general good idea, I found Pirates of the Caribbean incredibly, terribly dull. I felt as though I had stumbled across and children’s television drama and by the time the two-hour running time had expired I was literally climbing the walls of the cinema in anticipation of being able to get out again. The biggest issues that I had with the film was that I felt cheated. I felt as though I had been led to believe that I was getting one thing when in fact I was getting something entirely different. This film smelt of Disney from start to finish and somehow managed to turn an unpalatable concoction of horror and violence into a jolly, sugary romp.

The film suffers terribly from its burden of cliches that seem to dominate things from start to finish. The pirates all sound like the jolly sailor off The Simpsons and the only real surprise to me was that they didn’t mention “me hearties!” The pirates’ dialogue was something from a 1970s children’s comic, complete with Davy Jones’ Locker and every other overblown pirate cliché known to man. To make sure they weren’t too frightening for the kiddies they were all shown as being as thick as two short planks (oops – even I’m using cliches now) and there is the ubiquitous pair of clumsy yet loveable rogues who seem incapable of getting anything right. To “lighten” the tone even further, the audience is bombarded with endless comical scenes involving one of the pirates and his wooden, artificial eye falling out. Oh how we laughed.

It’s not just the pirates that do your head in, either. The good guys are equally insufferable. If you had to write a list of the top five predictable characters you’d have as the good guys then you’d almost certainly get them right straight away.

* The beautiful hapless heroine. She stares danger in the eye, screams as required and goes weak at the knees at the merest hint of a tight pair of trousers.

* The swashbuckling hero (Orlando Bloom). From humble origins, he has secret desires for the beautiful heroine but is too shy to do anything about it. Everything he does, he does it for her. He’d die for her. Bluk.

* The military prig (Jack Davenport). Devoted to king and country, he puts the military before anything else and has this tendency to want to execute everyone the heroine takes a shine too. Considering he is cruel, emotionless and cold he is, of course, played by a Brit.

* The hopeless father. Concerned more with his wig than anything of real concern he’ll hide behind doors and run around after his virgin daughter like a clucking hen.

* The buffoons. They’ll be soldiers, or sailors or some such like and they’ll spend all their time arguing with one another and generally being rather incompetent.

It’s all so predictable and so, erm, nice. Oh and it’s all very dull too. The kids might think it’s funny but I’m sure everyone else thought it was as daft as I did. I can accept that a film might have this sort of tone and content but I had been prepared for something a little meatier and I was ultimately rather disappointed.

For me, the most irritating character was Captain Jack Sparrow, a hapless renegade pirate whose brain has become rather addled from too many pints of beer and too many hours in the sun. Johnny Depp resists absolutely not opportunity to camp things up to the extreme, but it all added to the silliness of the film. Acting as though he is either high, drunk or both he seems to flounce around the screen like a pantomime dame and his voice cut through me as soon as he opened his mouth. It really is one of those performances you will either love or loathe – for me, it was certainly the latter.

The film’s greatest undoing, however, is its running time. At nearly two and a half-hours in length, I found myself virtually losing the will to live by the time it finished. At several points in the film, things seem to build up to a climax only to carry on further and you really begin to wonder whether it will ever end. This surprised me greatly because I really couldn’t see the justification for such a long film. The story isn’t particularly complicated, there aren’t any real twists or turns to it and very often I thought that they could have cut certain scenes out. Although the film seems targeted at family/child audiences, I’m sure that the kids would get bored quicker than I did and a good editing might have made the film rather less painful than it was.

Given Gore Verbinski’s previous work on The Ring, I was really disappointed with this film – but when I noticed that he had also directed The Mexican (yawn) and Mouse Hunt (very silly comedy) things started to fall into place. This was one of those films where I felt really cheated, as though I had been duped into seeing something that I would have otherwise steered well clear of. For me, this film was like a two hour Captain Bird’s Eye advert, without the fish fingers.

Not recommended

UK certificate: 12A Running time: 143 minutes

Summary: What IS all the fuss about then?