Hang on to your gold matees, it's gonna be a bumpy night!

Rating: Null/10 (10 July 2003)

Well, what can I say.. Johnny Depp, looking like Alice Cooper meets the Scarlet Pimpernell meets Bob Marley and sounding like Oscar Wilde after too much absinth plays Jack Sparrow the overthrown captain of a band of cuthroats. The mutinous pirates are now led by a deliciously ruthless Captain Barbosa played to the teeth by Geoffrey Rush. They are in search of the final pieces of Cortez'zzzzzz Aztec Gold so they can lift the curse of Moctezuma and stop running around in a disheveled pirate vessel known as the Black Pearl. All it takes is some special ingredient and the curse will be lifted and the guys can go around carousing and raping and pilaging and enjoy the whole thing rather than spend eternity as unsatisfied and perpetually ticked-off skeletal spooks. Orlando Bloom plays a blacksmith Will Turner who has a bit of pirate in him and wonders why, and Keira Knightley plays Elizabeth, daughter of the Governor who knows why.

All in all good squash-buckler of a film that has little to do with the ride of the same name save one scene in Tortuga which looks remarkably like the raping and pilaging that goes on in the Disney attraction. The skeletal capuchin monkey was a nice touch. makeup gets high marks, although Depp should be hung for his excessive use of eye shadow and sparkle disco glitter..come on Johnny, who are you fooling?
Apparently the music by Klaus Badelt, was a direct RIP OFF of Gladiator, because Klaus Badelt did the incidental music for Gladiator. What did you think Klaus, no one would notice? So if you ignore the music stolen from another film, Pirates is good fun. Not a keeper, but fun just the same.