Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Arrr... me hearties... avast! This movie had flop written all over it. First off, look at the title. Are you kidding me? It was a disaster waiting to happen. On top of it. A pirate movie? Pirate movies usually just don't work out. Dumb outfits. Clangindy clang clang of the sword? Swing on a rope? Gold? Yawn. It's all too hokey. Then factor in Johnny Depp and do the math and you got yourself a floppidy flop of potentially epic proportions.
I stocked up a bit at the deli on the way. I considered getting rum and coke for this flick. Like a flask and maybe like a 24 oz of coke and be all sorts of rummy yo ho ho piratey lit for this movie. But somehow mixing drinks in movies didn't seem so funny. Rum or no rum. It sort of crossed over to some other area of 'drinking in the movies'. An area that should be avoided.. And it was probably for the best that I picked up 2 24oz budweisers instead and stuffed them in each leg pocket of my cargo shorts. Also I passed on wasabi peas and replaced em with a pack of beef jerky. It was a good call. Beef jerky was fun to have in the movie but i'm not sure if it's a long term replacement. More like a quick fix till I figure out what to do about my falling out with the wasabis. I also got a Crunch bar with 10% more! Crunch I've decided is at the top of the food chain for candy bars for me.
Anyway, the Pirates. I liked it. Johnny Depp is mainly responsible for this movie being good. I've always liked the Depp since the Jump Street. I dig his weirdo characters for the most part and like that he's so willing to fail... big. Getting all decked out in that dopey outfit with the eyeliner and having some weird badish accent. I would think during the filming he'd have to look in the mirror at his getup and say, 'Holy macaroni... is this a career killer I'm in right now?' So I dig that. He makes acting seem fun (instead of unfun like harrison ford). And watching this movie made me feel like wanting to be an actor too. Except I couldn't get to play the good guy hero. They'd probably ugly me up extra as an extra with a big scar on my head. And I'd have to run at hero pirate when the evil pirate yells 'Get him!' and then I'd get kicked off the boat as heroboy swings by on a rope to trumpety music. And I'd go Arrrrrr..! all the way down to the water and get eaten by a shark.
So this movie was good mainly because it didn't take itself all seriously and pretend to be a great movie. It knew from the beginning it was never going to move beyond good and just decided to make the most of good. It didn't overreach to be something it wasn't. Geoffrey Rush was goodily creepy as the ghosty pirate. He was all hammy and stuff but in a good way and he looked rotten. The side characters worked and they all had like rotten teeth which was cool. Except for the chick who was hot. The plot revolved around some cursed aztec gold and blood or something. Whatever. It was really a scene to scene movie. And usually movies that rely on scene to scene fall apart because they seem too random or lazy. But this movie had enough glue to keep it altogether. And the glue was ... straight out fun and funny..
The bad news is the movie is definitely two scenes too long. 2.5 hours was just way overkill and unnecessary. It started to running on fumes toward the end. If it was gonna be that long. I think it could have had some more downtime. Some more strategizing. More insight. More tension. But every time I'd start to slip out of the movie Depp would mumbleslur a something or other and do some weird hand gesture and I'd be back in.
This movie is ultimately pretty very much forgettable in the long run. It didn't change my life. It's not a classic. But it made me appreciate those evil movie studio pirates a little more. Because with this movie it seemed like they were having fun. And not just busy working on figuring out the best way to demonstrate to us what technically fun is based on their polls and research and calculations. (unless they're actually starting to get good at that.... which would be disturbing.)
Three Good Things About this Movie
- It actually had a surprising amount of laugh out loud stuff.
- The ghost pirates who were all skeletonly achieved a good look of 'ghost
skeleton' where they didn't look like bad puppets and didn't look like guys in skeleton
suits. The right balance inbetween.
- Depp and Rush looked like they were having a really good time the whole time.
Three Bad Things About this Movie
- Alot of the time it looked like a bad movie being made on a bad set
(not that it was)
- It lacked a level of higher intensity throughout.
- The action sequences were too choppy. Editors take it back a notch. It's ok to
give us more than a second.
All in all. I don't think you need to rush out and see this. But it's much better than I thought it would be. Somehow it walked this tightrope between being sucky and great and doesn't seem to teeter either way. And when push comes before you know it you realize you're digging just watching the performance of it walking on the tightrope and that in and of itself is was entertaining enough to say... Yo ho friggindy hoedy ho ho arrr arrr ho! Moedy schmo grody yo! Arrr...
.... but bring beer for this one. Me thinks perhaps it avastly improved it. Arrr...