Another Bad Bruckheimer Production

Rating: 3/10 (16 July 2003)

The only thing memorable about 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' will be Johnny Depp's usual out-standing performance.
I can only hope that this 'Blockbuster' featurette won't do for his acting career what "Leaving Las Vegas" did to Nick Cage's. Remember Nicholas Cage, a quirky, interesting actor who was almost always worth watching, no matter how bad the movie? Then his big moment in "Leaving Las Vegas", and he hasn't done a thing worth watching on-screen since then, including his woefully lackluster performance in Martin Scorcese's 1999 film, "Bringing Out The Dead", where Mr. Cage would only be considered interesting in contrast to John Goodman's typically bombastic, bizarre, supporting-actor overdoses.
Now it's Mr. Depp's turn as an actor. Either he will continue to pick and choose his movies based on the merit he sees in them as an actor, along the lines of the late, great, Gregory Peck, and the still living, and equally astounding, Meryl Streep; or, he will pick and choose his movies based on how much money someone is willing to pay him for his 'appearing in' their studio's (insert studio name) production of (insert producer's name and/or production company name) film directed by (insert director's name), and starring (insert actor's name).
I am rooting for the uniqueness of Johnny Depp, of course.
For a movie as over-produced as "Pirates of the Caribbean" is, with the occasional well-done special effect (which should be a given considering the money spent), and interesting costuming (especially in the 'heaving-bossoms' scenes), some of the 'special effects' come off rather mediocre in comparison to better done summer fodder. The distance shot of the burning Port would have been at home in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds". The underwater skeleton-walking scenes looked like out-takes from "Clash of The Titans".
The humor of the movie is also in question, first during the looting of the British Naval Port and attacks on it's citizens by the pirates, with scenes of murder and attempted rape, played on film as quasi-comedy (in someone's seriously disturbed idea of entertainment); and also during the scenes when British Sailors are being slaughtered left and right onboard their own ship, immediately after the Pirates' underwater skeleton-walking scene, although these sailors are mostly being dis-embowelled off-screen so as to further distance us from contemplating the possibility of their deaths, and we are coerced instead into laughing at a Pirate's severed boney claw, clutching for the cowardly Governor Swann's throat. A character foppishly over-played by Jonathan Pryce. Can anyone say "Vincent Price" cheese-ball?
The dashingly pretty Orlando Bloom, as Will Turner, barely registers a ripple of a human nuance, rather like observing an interesting wall-paper. Likewise for Keira Knightley, as his longed-to-be-statuette-on-a-pedestal, Elizabeth Swann, the (of course!) Governor's daughter. For a good acting comparison see Kate Winslett in "Titanic". Both parts seemingly conceived by a group of writers discovering cheap plastic glow-in-the-dark religious icons for the first time and attempting to pass them off as feminine Heaven.
On screen for an hour too long, with convoluted plot 'twists' packing the wallop of moist cardboard, character actors required to do uninteresting comic 'bits' that might amuse a two-year old, screen-writing that barely rises to a fourth grade school play, wooden acting filmed along the lines of "Stand there and don't move while we shoot the scene", yet another 'typical' Hollywood feel-good ending, and, voila!, this summer's simple-minded Block-Buster movie is completed.
On to the usual mass-merchandising, burger chain tie-ins (no matter how oddly far-fetched), and 'direct-to-DVD' sequel(s)! Thank you very much.