Lots of fun, perfect popcorn entertainment

Rating: Null/10 (2 March 2004)

This is a movie to sit back and enjoy. Funny, fast-paced and with sterling performances from all of the cast, it's not to be missed for good, old-fashioned entertainment. I'm not a huge fan of Depp, but here he excels. Knightly and Bloom make an engaging couple and I enjoyed the fact that the characters of Governor Swann and Norrington were taken in a different direction from that which might be expected by Hollywood. The former could have easily become the stereotypical "You'll marry who I say you'll marry, girl!", while Norrington could have been the standard English navy bully and nasty piece of work. Instead, both were engaging good guys and Norrington's graceful dealings with Will and Elizabeth brought a core of humanity to the movie.

And to the previous reviewer who thought they'd spotted a plot hole:
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while there`s a serious plot hole at the end where it`s revealed that Jack Sparrow has been suffering from the curse all along so how did he manage to stay out of the moonlight without anyone noticing his skeletal state ? And how did he manage to get drunk on rum ?
Actually, you just weren't watching the movie properly. Jack wasn't in a skeletal state all along. Shortly before the swordfight in the caves with Barbossa and being shown to be skeletal, Jack stole one of the cursed coins from the chest. When he was stabbed by Barbossa, he became skeletal because he was cursed from that moment on. This was made clear at the time when Jack's response to finding out he was suddenly skeletal was to declare, "That's interesting!", flip the stolen coin between his fingers and tell Barbossa, "I couldn't resist." Indicating that he was aware that it was his stealing the coin that had turned him skeletal once he was stabbed.