Brief showings of skeletal appendages remain the only attribute which make this movie worth seeing.

Rating: Null/10 (6 December 2003)

Contains Spoilers!!! The film talents of Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush,Keira Knightley, Jack Davenport, and Jonathan Pryce combine with a script and some cameras to form a film with very little else besides brief showings of skeletal appendages to recommend it.
The film opens onto an 18th century British Naval Outpost in the Caribbean--named with a singular lack of originality Port Royal. Quickly we are introduced to a diverse set of characters: Governor Weatherby Swann, British official in control of the island. His adopted son of sorts, Commander Norrington, whose entire demeanor rejects such a proposal. Swann's beautiful daughter, Elizabeth, who is not only the apple of her father's eye but also that of the icy British Commander. Traveling down a class, young William Turner, an aspiring blacksmith whose lowly sights have been set on Elizabeth since the day of their acquaintance near a pirate ship 10 years earlier (represented in the first scene of the film) but who seems unable to find the words to express his devotion, despite the more than ample encouragement from the lady Elizabeth herself. And finally Captain Jack Sparrow--famed pirate just arrived in Port Royal on a wrecked ship, and whose profusion of jewelry and all other manner of piratical adornments take the conception of piratical "loot" to a whole other level.
Beginning with his name, Governor Swann (played by Jonathan Pryce) represents that unending tradition so popular in movies of a perhaps powerful (though in the end impotent) and certainly rather foppish British official who is a sort of watered down antagonist--an obstacle to our heroes, but certainly a removable one. His adopted son of sorts, Commander Norrington (Jack Davenport) is a less foppish and more threatening counterpart to Swann whose militaristic bearing and morals at least earn him a chance at respect. Keira Knightley plays Elizabeth, the maverick in an otherwise snobbish world of British bureaucracy who nearly chokes wearing a corset and desires a blacksmith rather than an aristocrat to wed, and is in general a vague worry to her father--whose basic goal throughout everything is to get her married to good Commander N.-- and an upset to the Commander himself. Will Turner ( Lord of the Rings' Orlando Bloom), down a class, is the heart-struck yet tongue-tied young lover, who would, if only a simple way presented itself, take Elizabeth for his own. (A way, we are to assume, devoid of the obstacles Swann and Norrington and the general social expectations of 18th century England, results of near 1200 years bloodshed, treaties, and evolution.) If only a good pirate or scallywag or murderer would show up and threaten Elizabeth...well then Will would know what to do, and those three hours of fencing each day would be worth something. (Well, lucky Will...unlike the majority of cerebral fantasies this dream does come true!) And finally Captain Jack Sparrow, portrayed in a semi inebriated, moderately perverted, and certainly deranged state by Johnny Depp who should probably be given a viewing in earlier films, perhaps Chocolat, before an assumption involving the quality of his on screen performances is made. Sparrow is the foil for Swann and particularly Norrington. His constant and ludicrously unshakeable irreverence is intended to make humor of the tight and pompous British, but, with the aid of Depp's spasmodic movements suggesting either foppishness or perversion only centers the viewer's attention on Sparrow's manic behavior and gives rise to a mild detachment from what one is viewing on screen. The main characters dispensed with in all their shallowness, the plot begins with a party at Port Royal, honoring Swann's adopted son of sorts. A scene between Elizabeth and her father which serves to convinces the viewer irreparably that there is absolutely no understanding between them, a scene with ardent lover Will, Captain Jack's arrival at port on a fast sinking vessel, the party, followed by Norrington's proposal of marriage to Elizabeth...who, apparently due to the overwhelming tightness of her corset, faints and tumbles from the ramparts she has conveniently positioned herself on, into the sea below.
And then, heralded in by this dubious incident, the plot surges forward full force. An attack on Port Royal by pirates under the command of the evil Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush in a role which deserves fourth billing instead of second and was hopefully accepted for either the money or publicity), a kidnapping of Elizabeth by those afore mentioned--and then a stunning rescue by Master Will, guided by a slightly reluctant Jack Sparrow, which includes the illegal appropriation of the British Navy's prize ship in the region, and its navigation to a safe port by Will and Jack, where the search for Barbossa and crew will continue. (The manner in which the Navy's prize ship is attained is particularly ludicrous.)
Added to the plot is the revelation that Barbossa and crew are actually ghosts of sorts, suspended between the world of death and living, and that this suspension takes its evidentiary form in the transformation of the pirates from flesh to bone. Which allows the sporadic metamorphoses referred to at the beginning of the review between skeletal and human expression--represented in the timely alterations of the pirates' appendages.
With such a setting in mind, the plot moves forward for two more hours, and with a script formulated around constant comedy, and fight scenes which live up to about the level of Harry Potter in all their awe inspiring dimensions, the film is less than a satisfying one. At 153 minutes, a good 30 of which could have been removed from the screen entirely, one is in a semi lethargy by the final conclusion when, with the bad guys defeated, Jack escaped from the law of the British navy, Elizabeth safely returned and without challenge or doubt her love to Master Will bright as ever, and Swann resigned to his daughter's fate as a blacksmith's wife and Norrington to his as a bachelor...love triumphs. (At which point one calls desperately for the realism of movies like Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth, but then with metamorphosing appendages what can be real?)
And so we are to assume Elizabeth lives out her life happily as a blacksmith's wife, no longer with a constant supply of income or any real claims to class distinction. However, the movie does not encourage this train of thought, evident by the last exchange:
At the close of the film Swann says to his daughter frettingly of Will, "But he's a blacksmith."
To which she replies, with a long lustful look at him mentioned.
"No, he's a pirate!"
So, fittingly, ends a film, which is from beginning to end a shallow fantasy. Bravo!
2/10