Bearable summer swill

Rating: 6/10 (13 July 2003)

This is a "good fun for the family" movie, if you prefer your adventure soft boiled. I can't quite decide whether Johhny Depp makes the movie better or worse. Without him it would certainly have been drearier, but with him it takes the movie from adventure to amusement park ride. He plays a scalawag pirate who is more of a swish, than swash, buckler. He teeters rather than swaggers, bombs out with the ladies, and never shows us any of the skills of a former Pirate Captain.
He's the modern androgynous anti hero we've had to put up with since "real men" departed the movies.
Geoffery Rush on the other hand is the anchor that holds this flimsy vehicle down. He is plays evil properly: with cold amusement, and a solid sense of his own superiority. He adds just the right trace of despair at his condition, and avoids all of Depp's silly stereotypical "Pirate" babble. A more ironic Director would have allowed him to escape his formulaic ending.
Unfortunately the movie doesn't know how to take itself seriously, when that is required, preferring to trot in a comedy relief duo when no such relief is required, and to insist on allowing Depp's character to stay dizzily in character, when I, for one, desperately wanted him to show some passion.