Pirates of the Caribbean: The Cure of the Summer Movie Season (Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl (DVD))

Member Name: shalimar

Product:	Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl (DVD)
Date:	21/09/03 (422 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The Supernatural element pushes the film forward, Johnny Depp's performance, Verbinski's direction and Writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio

Disadvantages: Doesn't fully exploit the potential on offer

Pirates of the Caribbean is this year's, "one I didn't see coming." I didn't expect to find myself going to see a pirate movie, because they're usually rubbish. The last pirate film I can recall watching was Cutthroat Island and (thankfully?) I don't remember it very well. Anyway, what drew me to go into a packed, hot, sweltering cinema with NO AIR CONDITIONING was that Pirates of the Caribbean had injected the somewhat dead genre with a new lease of life by ditching the usual looking for treasure. Instead the pirates are giving treasure back and the story has a twisted supernatural element.

Directed by - Gore Verbinski
Starring – Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Jack Davenport, Jonathan Pryce, Lee Arenberg, Mackenzie Crook, Michael Berry Jr., Isaac C. Singleton Jr., Kevin R. McNally
Length – 143 minutes
Cert - 12A

The crew of The Black Pearl, led by Captain Barbossa (Rush), can't eat, drink, or feel, as they've been cursed to walk the Earth as the living dead. However, we don't know that until moonlight shows their true emaciated form. Their curse can be lifted though, by obtaining an Aztec coin, which hangs around the neck of one Elizabeth Swann (Knightley). So The Black Pearl pirates kidnap her! Upon hearing this, blacksmith and Elizabeth admirer Will Turner (Bloom) just can't help himself, as he's gotta play hero and get her back, because he loves her you know, but he doesn't know where to begin. Fortunately for him, eccentric pirate Jack Sparrow (Depp) arrived in town and he knows a thing or eight about The Black Pearl.

With its swordplay and special effects, Pirates of the Caribbean was more like a mixture of The Mask of Zorro and The Mummy. Plus it has an epic blockbuster feel with its big names, long running time, grand musical score and its final shot. The film didn't conjure up thoughts about previous pirate films,
probably because Pirates of the Caribbean is in a league of its own here. Whereas former pirate movies concentrated on the greed for gold among characters, this brings in some bad pirates who you might even feel a little sorry for, because (as unexpected as it sounds) they only want to get rid of their curse! They want to feel alive again, and what's wrong with that? Nothing I tell you, because even villains have the right to feel alive, only so that we can see good guys kill them!

Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow steals every scene he's in and gets away with it! Within the first few minutes on screen, he doesn't say anything but he already makes a strong impression due to how ridiculously cool he looks, as he stands high upon his mast. Depp adds a lot of small touches to his character with his interactions, dialogue and damn near perfect comic timing, so that every time he's on screen your eyes are likely to be drawn towards him. When Will and Jack are making their getaway, Will says, "They're coming." Jack turns and gives off one hell of a sly smile. He has no reason to, but it adds to his character and damn it, it just looks cool! In fact, the audience so loved him that they gasped every time he was close to death. They seriously didn't want him to die. Plus, you never really know whose side Jack Sparrow is on.

Orlando Bloom plays the safe hero character Will Turner, the town's blacksmith who's handy with a sword and lusts after Elizabeth. As a rash hero, Bloom doesn't really add a lot to this familiar role. He does a lot of swordplay (which he's probably become accustomed to now since the Lord of the Rings trilogy) and gives the girls some handsome close-ups. His whole presence would explain why the screening I attended was full of teenage girls. Bloom basically plays it by the book.

Geoffrey Rush is the "stab you in the back" villain of the piece, Barbossa, and he likes
apples. He gives the film a fine quality and also puts on a convincingly dodgy pirate accent (he says "Ahh-Harr"). Along with Depp, Rush is doused in makeup and surprisingly he's also very funny.

Keira Knightley is the "help me" heroine with huge eyes and a posh voice. It's a bit predictable as she gets round to smacking a few pirates, screaming loudly and wearing pretty clothes, but she does it all quite well. And here's something I didn't see coming, she gets slapped about a bit too! Top stuff!

The supernatural element is a unique idea and makes this stand out from the lazy crowd of blockbusters that are following rather then innovating. The cursed pirates are a great slant, but I found it a real shame that the film never fully exploits the potential out of it. It's disappointing that throughout the "over two hours" running time, there are only two major scenes where we see the crew of the Black Pearl under moonlight in full on curse mode. Once, when Barbossa introduces the problem he and his crew have and again, during the second and last time, when the film goes all out with a showstopper of a finale. Because of this the film never overdoes it with the special effects. Though when it does, the technical wizards at ILM have a lot of fun in showing the audience just how much attention they've paid to detail. Sparrow and Barbossa's duel is a particular example.

It's nice to see that director Gore Verbinski has offered us a film that's as much fun as the theme park ride it's based on. Not that I'd know as I've never really been there, but I'm sure you know what I'm trying to say (I hope). In that the film really is a great thrill ride! Plus, if you go to the cinema I did, you'll even get wet! Gore Verbinski has already had his fair share of success, but this film has now cemented him as a major player in Hollywood. That's right, because the
next time he directs a film you can expect its trailer to say, "From the Director of Pirates of the Caribbean."

A lot of the credit also goes to writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, as they litter the film with enough witty and occasionally outrageous dialogue, giving each of the main characters memorable one liners. In fact the film could be classed as a comedy as well as an action/adventure. There's also the addition of a few screwball sight gags you'd expect to see in a cartoon, but they work so well in here. Highlights include a cursed pirate and his problems with a fake eye and an absolutely genius idea of how to kill a trio of cursed pirates.

Pirates of the Caribbean has a lot of good things to offer. It's a swashbuckling romp of an adventure movie with some fine laughs, fancy special effects and nice boy Bloom. It all works because you're having so much fun watching it. Probably as much fun as the cast and the crew… well, apart from the fact you're not getting paid. And look, I used the word swashbuckling! Doesn't that make you want to go see it? A little overlong but it's one of the few summer blockbusters that's actually worth the inflated price of admission! It's so good that I'm sure we can expect a cheap rip-off within the next few years.

Rating - 8 out of 10

Points of Interest:
·The film was made on a budget of $125 million. It took $46 million on its opening weekend in the US. It opened in the UK with a taking of £3.7 million. Worldwide totals for the film have tallied up to $530 million worldwide.
·The film is based on a theme park ride at the Disneyland Resort in California. The film also received its world premiere there on June 28, 2003.
·On August 10, 2002, a fire started at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, where the movie was being shot. It was extinguished within the hour and nobody was hurt. It was said to have caused somewhere between
$350,000 to $525,000 worth of damage.
·Johnny Depp revealed how he modelled his performance of Jack Sparrow on The Rolling Stones' Keith Richards.
·The gold teeth Johnny Depp wears in the film are real! He got so into the role that he had his dentist implant them and gold caps all on his front teeth. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer saw this, wasn't all too pleased and asked him to remove a few. Also when filming was over, Depp was so keen to go back to his home in France that he forgot to have them all removed!
·When having to film on a ship, most of the scenes were filmed with the ship in a dock, with the background digitally removed. Only six days of the shoot were filmed out on the ocean.
·Producer Jerry Bruckheimer said that the original script (written by Stuart Beattie and Jay Wolpert), was handed to him by Disney and it was "a straight pirate movie. It was bland, too tame." So he sent it to Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who came up with the cursed pirates scenario.
·Disney has begun talks with writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio about drafting a sequel.
·Disney are also aiming to release The Haunted Mansion, another movie based on one of their theme park rides, which has Eddie Murphy attached to it.

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