**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Jack Davenport, and Jonathan Pryce
Directed by Gore Verbinski & written by Ted Elliot, Terry Rossio, Stuart Beattie, and Jay Wolpert
2003
PG13 143 min
You know, my longest reviews don’t necessarily have the most to say. Sometimes they just take too long to say it.
Everything in “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” must have looked good on paper—but didn’t the filmmakers notice how much paper they were holding? Like its title, “Pirates of the Caribbean” just keeps going on and on. Nothing in it is particularly bad and, after one viewing, I can’t quite pick out individual scenes and say “this bit right here is unnecessary.” But, at a hundred and forty-three minutes, it may wear out its welcome. Which is a shame, because the movie features some inspired special effects, and moments of crazed brilliance from Geoffrey Rush and Johnny Depp as two pirates, the first bad and the second slightly-less bad.
Of course, these things are all relative, and your tolerance for technically-competent (yet repetitive) timber-shivering swordplay on the high seas may be higher than mine. But you have to admit that “Pirates of the Caribbean” lacks the rhythm of a better, shorter adventure. “Raiders of the Lost Ark” is twenty-eight minutes shorter, which, for those of you in TV land, is more than enough time to watch an episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond” with the commercials taken out. “Pirates” is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer—who is probably a very nice man but about whom I’m always complaining, and about whom I’ll complain some more—and although it is infinitely more cheerful and entertaining than his “Bad Boys II,” it shares the same problem of rhythm. Neither movie feels like it’s really building toward a climax; the action never feels like it’s about to come to a head. There’s a fight, some talk, then another fight, then some talk, then another fight, ad infinitum. I’ve played video games that feel more like they’re building to something. I wouldn’t have noticed all this when I was seven or eight though. I would have just been happy that there were two male heroes so my brother and I could play it together, which, admittedly, is more than you can say for Indiana Jones.
Those two heroes are a pirate named Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) and a blacksmith named Will Tanner (Orlando Bloom of “The Lord of the Rings”). They reluctantly join forces to rescue Will’s beloved (Keira Knightley of “Bend It Like Beckham,” only now much more of a fox) from a gang of bloodthirsty brigands, led by Geoffrey Rush. But this is no ordinary band of murderous pirates: these men are cursed to spend eternity in a kind of waking death, wandering the Earth until the last of the Aztec gold they stole is returned. By day, they are like other men, but “in the light of the moon,” we see them for what they are: zombies!
This is one hell of a set-up and it leads to some pretty impressive special effect sequences, my favorite being how the pirates attack a British ship by walking across the floor of the shallows. Typically, “subtle” is to Jerry Bruckheimer as “celibacy” is to porn stars, but this is a neat shot: we see the boat, we see the sandy floor underwater, all illuminated by the moonlight. Ever-so-gradually, decaying, sabre-carrying skeletons begin to emerge from the blackness, walking toward us. But the masterstroke is when they walk under the shadow of the boat, out of the moonlight, and their human form is restored, briefly, until they walk out of the shadow. Visually, no two pirates are alike, either in their human forms or as skeletons, and we can even identify their skeletons based on their human faces.
Bloom’s Will Tanner is a standard adventure hero, handsome and upright, as Knightley’s damsel in distress is also sturdy but forgettable. It is Depp and Rush who liven things up, with huge hats, awful teeth, and dialogue like “are we to spend eternity locked in this combat?” (To which the other responds: “You could just surrender.”) Depp, who has proved with “Ed Wood” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” to be a master of goofy voices, spends much of “Pirates” in a kind of speech-slurring drunken stupor, or something. Gibberish songs are always under his breath, and he is perpetually looking at things, blinking in astonishment, then tipping forward with his mouth open to look again. Even if that thing is a man’s face.
Depp’s Captain Sparrow is, of course, too spaced out to ever really be perturbed by any predicament, whether it be the noose, the undead, a rapier in his face, or the looks people give him for sashaying everywhere he goes. His mouth is packed with gold fillings and his long hair doesn’t look like it’s ever been washed, but giving Johnny Depp bad teeth, according to my wife, is like painting Salma Hayek up to look like Frida Kahlo: you can try all you want, but some people are going to be hot no matter what. Geoffrey Rush (“Quills” and “Shine”), who will probably never be hot, is also a bit detached from his situation, but he uses a kind of Shakespearean grandiloquence that allows him to see how supremely ironic everything is. He spends most of the movie with a monkey on his back, literally, and likes to look up and sideways when he is engaging in villainous wistfulness.
Earlier I said I wasn’t sure what I would take out, but now that I think about it I would definitely shorten everything involving the damsel’s governor father (Jonathan Pryce, a very good actor) and the commodore he hopes she will marry (Jack Davenport of “The Talented Mr. Ripley”). Bruckheimer movies always include some authority figures to seem snooty, get bashed, and be wrong at every turn, and these are they. Pryce and Davenport are fine actors, but we know the damsel will not choose the commodore, and their scenes only add to the tedium of a movie that goes in circles and whose swordfights are all too long.
I don’t care if the movie is historically accurate or not, I don’t care how many black powder pistols still work after being thrown in saltwater, and I don’t care that no one’s clothes stay wet for more than thirty or forty seconds after they’ve gone swimming. I don’t even mind that it is never said explicitly that if Jack Sparrow is a pirate that would probably also make him a cold-blooded murderer. I don’t mind that the movie is shallow (in fact, I’m glad it’s shallow, because adding any sort of depth to it would be unbearably pretentious). “Pirates of the Caribbean” features some great locations, effects, and production design—did I mention all the cannons, corsets, redcoats, powdered wigs, and pirate flags beating in the wind?—but after a while I was full. Two hours and twenty-three minutes. This is the kind of movie where the director’s cut might actually be shorter, which would make a movie I’d like even more. Why wasn’t there a Weinstein to cut it in half?
Finished November 14, 2003
Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night
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