Funny, exciting, swashbuckling joy

Rating: 8/10 (3 August 2003)

Loved it! Just saw the Stones-stock in Toronto with Keith Richards, then Boom, there he is speaking thru time and depp space!

Keef!
How funny!
Heard it /saw it / felt it Before reading confirmation here and elsewhere that he Was being Keith as a pirate, and Yeah, it obviously wasn't just some arbitrary hip choice, like playing him as Bob Dylan or even John Lennon. It's great to know Keith is still living and breathing among us, and great to see him living and breathing on a pirate adventure in the 1800s through overlaid masks of Johnny's Hunter Thompson and Ichabod Crane and Don Juan -- like Ed McMahon becoming an axe-wielding maniac thru Jack Nicholson -- bizarre, but it works.
The choreography of all the many swordfighting scenes was great -- comical at times, theatrical & tense at others -- it was Errol Flynn with a little Fred Astaire, and maybe Eddie Murphy or Jim Carey.
This is Swiss Family Robinson, Kirk Douglas, swashbuckling swordfights, swinging from ship to ship -- except done in a real 21st century foxy way -- with explosions that shake your soda, and a surreal Star Wars bar scene in Pirateland, where Jack 'Han Solo' Sparrow goes back to recruit a crew.

The music was just great, swept you along with the swooshes of swords, as did the choreography. The sets take you there, the castles make me want to be there, and the living skeleton special effects bring out my own worst nightmares. The acting is typically melodramatic Disney comedy, but that's the genre, and its consistent and funny. The storyline is kind of convoluted and ridiculous, but the dialog is righteous (just look at all the quotes on this site after about one week in release). Finding faults in this is like complaining about Duck Soup; ignore the flies, and just fly with the parrots. This is a silly, wonderful, imaginative, transportive ride based on the coolest scary ride at Disneyland. How could it not have been made before? And I'd love to have a five bowl serial.