X marks the spot for fun

Rating: 7/10 (22 August 2017)

Plot; A pirate teams with a blacksmith in an attempt to rescue a young woman from the cursed crew of his former ship.
Having not watched this since it originally hit DVD four... teen years ago (gulp), I was surprised by a number of things. For one, why did I wait so long to revisit it? I remember thinking it was fun (and at the time, refreshingly different), and the former certainly still holds true. Perhaps more surprising is Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow. Over the years I've watched the various sequels (save for the latest one), and there was--if memory serves--a severe level of diminishing returns. But even more, I remember Depp's Sparrow being a total buffoon. Seeing him here I realize that what happened was that Sparrow became a caricature of the character Depp created in the original. To be sure Jack Sparrow's got some quirk to him, but he's not the ever-slurring gag-a-second clown I'd pegged him to be. He's got an edge here. A swagger. And he wears it well.
Though it's a tad too long for its own good, it still moves by a brisk pace and has a tight focus. Its enormous success spawned a "Bigger is better" philosophy for at least the next two sequels, and that's a shame. I'll eventually get around to revisiting the rest of the series and seeing this Summer's sequel, but my memory says that fun walks the plank at the sword tip of spectacle.