The most fun you can have with your clothes on!!

Rating: 10/10 (4 September 2003)

If ever there was a summer that needed a film like Pirates of the Caribbean it was the summer of 2003. For all their merits as entertainment, the likes of X2, The Matrix Reloaded and Hulk were all fundamentally serious affairs, treating their subject matter with a sober integrity. Pirates isn't that kind of movie. Pirates has only one agenda: fun, fun and more fun. It's the kind of tongue-in-cheek, flight-footed family movie that will almost certainly be premiered on BBC1 on Christmas Day in a couple of years, and will soon after be making regular appearances in Bank Holiday TV schedules for years to come.
It has so much to recommend it - the old-fashioned swashbuckling action, the sparkling gag-filled script, the gorgeous coupling of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, the stunning CGI - and yet it's easy to pick out its strongest point. With a performance that deserves an Oscar nomination (but of course he won't get it), Johnny Depp - as the roguish, ambiguous, enigmatic Captain Jack Sparrow - doesn't so much light up the screen as burn a hole in it. Keith Richards is the obvious basis for his characterisation - all lop-sided tics and mockney accent - but unlike the wrinkly axeman, Depp looks fantastic. Never before has a man with a plaited beard, dreadlocks and permanent eye shadow looked so damn attractive. His forays into big-budget territory may be few and far between, but there can be no doubt that the guy is a proper Movie Star.
It would be a lesser movie without Depp, but that's not to say the movie relies on him. It's like saying that Indiana Jones would be a lesser movie without Harrison Ford, purely because he's so perfect for the part. Pirates stands worthy comparison with Spielberg's archaeological trilogy. Director Gore Verbinksi (returning to the family-oriented mood of his earlier Mousehunt after the grisly The Ring) makes light work of handling multiple characters, a fairly complex revisionist plot (in this pirate movie, it's all about putting treasure back), judging the scenes of the supernatural just right so that they scare the kiddies without giving them nightmares, and allowing even Geoffrey Rush (with the toughest task of the four principals as the cursed villain of the piece) to camp it up and have some fun. Leave your cynical, adult self at the door, because for sheer uncomplicated entertainment value, Pirates of the Caribbean is the best movie of the summer, if not the whole of 2003.