6/10 and even that is mostly due to Depp

Rating: 5/10 (6 February 2004)

It is rather sad since this movie showed a LOT of potential in its beginning, yet soon enough it became yet another kitschy Disney movie.
First the good: The performance of Depp was wonderful, even if a tiny bit too ecstatic. The visuals and the sounds were, as you can expect from Disney, amazing as well and reminded me of LOTR visuals somewhat. Also, surprisingly, the movie has also quite a sophisticated story.
{ MAY CONTAIN SOME SPOILERS BELOW }
Very quickly, though, the movie dropped very low. The scenes became repetitive and dull. I grew tired of all these sword slashings, first with men, then with shields. In fact, there is just TOO MUCH fighting in this movie. It isn't the stunning fighting of Matrix/LOTR though where you grew more excited every minute, it is more like the regular Disney fighting of, "Aww he dropped the barrel and it dropped on the skeleton, ain't it funny folks?". All the fighting scenes are FULL with Disney cliches like this one.
{ REAL SPOILERS NOW }
In fact, ALL the movie grows to be more and more one big cliche as it spins towards its grand finale cliche end. Starting from the silly sentences (BadGuy: "Say good-bye!", barrel falls on him, GoodGuy: "Good-bye!"), continuing with even sillier sentences that I could guess ten seconds before the actors said them and ending with the super sticky, happy "and they lived happily ever after" end. I hoped they will broke SOME of the sweetness by letting SOMEONE die but apparently they decided to be the STEREOTYPE of cliche Disney movies.
Oh well, another 2 hours bit the dust.