The ride's good.....the film's better!

Rating: 10/10 (12 September 2003)

As has been correctly stated in piecemeal form, Bruckheimer simply got it all right with this one. He went back to basics, hired the best in the business and came up with pure escapist entertainment that works on every level. THE ROCK with an eye patch! Didn't hurt his cause either, that Johnny Depp handed in this once-in-a-career performance as Master Pirate Captain Jack Sparrow - part cockney, part Gilbert Grape, all Rock-Star - the most endearing rogue this side of the Jolly Roger! Geoffrey Rush's turn as Barbossa, a supernatural `Captain Hook' gone feral and swapping his parrot for an occasionally digitised monkey-with-attitude is given arguably his best role since Helfgott! Bloom also does just that.Erroll Flynn coming along nicely! Meanwhile, the painfully corsetted Miss Knightley balances the film's romantic interest, Elizabeth Swann, beautifully - somewhere between Ripley and GI Jane.Toss in a truly great script that bridges the gulf so well between pirate chatter and teenage attention-span and you're looking at a seriously brilliant off the wall two and whatever hours of cornball whimsy that wouldn't put a harmful psychological dent in a five year old's psyche.
Depp drops one-liners that are funny as all hell (`Stop putting holes in my ship'). The production work, costuming, action sequences and set-design are cutting edge. What we have here is a multi-dimensional `lost-boys' loose in a candy shop. It's a buddy movie, a romantic comedy, an actioner and always at its heart, tasteful family-orientated entertainment. Bruckheimer has tossed everyone's juvenile pirate fantasies into a blender and poured out this tribute to childhood memory and screen decency.
Great ending also that does justice to what preceded it. Reminded me very much of another rollickingly good-time action-fest from Sam Raimi that co-incidentally was also top heavy with some seriously aggro skeletal miscreants - ARMY OF DARKNESS. `Hail to the King baby!'