Believe it

Rating: Null/10 (2 August 2011)

The best movies often start with several strikes against them. I'm thinking of starting a list: Top Ten Movies That Should Have Sucked But So Didn't. This movie will be on it. The only reason I saw it at all was that we had a teenager girl around the house at the time it came out. Look at the facts: It's based on a Disneyland ride. The "babe" is a scrawny, sneering plastic surgery nightmare. There are pirates in it---the kiss of death (along with hot air balloons). Those factors would normally be enough to sink any movie, but not this one.
Depp is magnificent---worth the price of admission all by himself. He's created one of the most memorable and quirky characters in movie history in Captain Jack Sparrow. Rush is magnificent, too. His snarling, insouciant West-of-England salty dog is the distillation of every such pirate in every such movie since Treasure Island. (Their sword fight, by the way, is one of the best in any movie any time.) Bloom holds his own without intruding, and so does Knightley, I grudgingly admit, although I couldn't get past those swollen lips with the thigh fat squirted into them with a hypodermic needle. Why don't they just tattoo a mouth on their face and be done with it? Unless you hate fun or get creeped out by ghoulishness (and I'm not talking about Knightley this time), you will like this movie.