The First and Best

Rating: Null/10 (23 May 2011)

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
The evil pirate Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) kidnaps the daughter (Keira Knightley) of a Caribbean governor and heads off but the woman's admirer (Orlando Bloom) asks Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) to help him track them down. He reluctantly agrees because he wants revenge against Barbossa who led a mutiny against him years earlier. The first paragraph in Roger Ebert's review perfectly sums up my feelings on this movie because he makes it clear that there's a nice 90-minute "B" movie trapped inside an incredibly long and drawn out 142-minutes. Seriously, 142-minutes for a pirate movie? I know this movie has a large group of fans and I know it made hundreds of millions of dollars throughout the world but there are so many great things here that I can't help but feel that they're all wasted simply because someone didn't know how to shout cut and then leave stuff on the cutting room floor. We'll start off with all the good stuff and one can't help but be visually entertained by everything going on. I really loved the look of the sets, the pirate ships, the costumes and of course the dead pirates look terrific as well. I'm not a fan of CGI but I thought they did a pretty good job mixing up the make-up with the special effects and the visual look of the pirates is incredibly good and quite realistic as well. Another major plus is that you can't help but feel as if you're really in the 17th Century. I thought the filmmakers did a terrific job with all the outfits and this here helped add some creditability to the movie. The action scenes are all incredibly well-staged including a terrific bit where the under-maned Sparrow boat must go up against Barbossa's using any item that they can. Another terrific battle happens at the very end but with a summer Blockbuster you expect the action to be good. Then we have the nice performances by Rush, Bloom, Knightley and various other supporting players. I thought Knightley was incredibly good coming off quite sexual as well as being believable in the toughness of the character. Then there's Johnny Depp who picked up an Oscar-nomination for his performance. I can't say I'd call it that great but there's no question that Depp makes the role all his own and even manages to make the performance original, which isn't all that easy to do with a pirate. I really loved the tough of Keith Richards that he threw into the performance and I think any fan of The Stones will enjoy it. However, most of this is wasted because everything just gets dragged out so long that after a while you can't help but feel as if you're got some great eye candy but nothing that tastes overly good. Edit out thirty-minutes and I'd say you'd have a much more entertaining film.