Fun--but nothing special

Rating: Null/10 (18 July 2003)

If it weren't for Johnny Depps amusing antics and some other little character bits of humor, this movie wouldn't be worth the price of admission. As it is, it still barely is. The story kind of meanders a bit and at times it becomes confusing whether the story is about pirates and their attempt to raise a curse that has left them as undead, impossible to kill and impossible to feel. Or if the moie is about romance and the British Navy's attempt to rid the seas of pirates.
The former is most certainly the true plot, but bddie Geoffrey Rush, who seems to have been born to one day play the standard bloodthirsty pirate, consumes maybe not even half the screentime, and as a whole, seems relatively unimportant in a story more concerned with a young blacksmith's realization that he is the son of a pirate, that he loves the Governor's daughter, that he holds the key to ending the curse of the Black Pearl, and that he must deal with the bumbling Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp).
Orlando Bloom has some good bits playing the young blacksmith, and he shows he has some great mileage beyond Middle-earth, if only he can get out of sword-fighting (he costars with Brad Pitt in the upcoming "Troy."). The movie is long and action-packed, full of comedy and some frightening images. And succeeds on a level thanks almost entirely to Depp's off-the-wall performance.