Entertaining - but predictable and average overall

Rating: 5/10 (2 February 2004)

First, the good parts. The film is entertaining with some good pirate action sequences and Johnny Depp does a fabulous job. For a Hollywood pirate action film it isn't too shabby at all.
But...that being said there is very little extraordinary about it. Instead it is simply average. The skeleton crew is not very menacing at all - so why did they have to be skeletons? The movie would have worked better with another 'plot' without the curse and just focusing on actual human pirates.

The plot is predictable and full of holes. The film could've ended LONG before it did. Most all the roles were cardboard cut outs. There is the handsome hero that is willing to stick his neck out for the girl especially because he isn't encumbered by any societal status. There is the rich suitor that is stuck up and walks so straight and narrowly that he is more robotic than human and thus obviously not the man for the heroine. And finally the heroine that despite living in the past is somehow endowed with all sorts of concepts of the independent modern woman.