(Spoilers) A frightening lack of enthusiasm displayed by (nearly) all involved...

Rating: Null/10 (4 September 2003)

(Spoilers!)
First of all, let me make clear my attitude towards all things piratey: I *love* them!!! I own (legal) copies of all four Monkey Island PC adventure games, played "Pirates!...Gold" for quite a while and even liked the near-universally loathed "Cutthroat Island", as well as 1991s "Hook". I also approached "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" with appropriately low expectations, as one should every comedy/action/adventure movie. This was just going to be good, low-brow fun on an otherwise wasted sunny Saturday afternoon in August, I told myself.
And yet I was *completely* disgusted with this movie! (Much to my own surprise). And what's worse, I felt I saw my own disgust mirrored in the bored, lacklustre performance given by most of the actors concerned (excluding Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, who did a fair job with the material they were given), as well as the poor quality of the costumes and props (especially the magic compass, the Inca chest and the other riches in the treasure cave). Much of this movie looks as if it was actually *shot* on some location in some Disney amusement park.
Johnny Depp's make-up looks completely ridiculous, while he walks around like he is either a monkey, drunk, or blatantly gay. Neither of these qualities is completely believable for a pirate (not even non-stop drunkenness). It's as if Depp took one look at the script and decided to pretend it was all a grand rehearsal he only had to recite his lines for and look hazy.
What is worse, Geoffrey Rush (playing Depp's antagonist) appears to have adopted a similar stance towards the movie. The only times his character comes across as even remotely menacing or even scary is when he turns into a skeletal zombie. And that's not something you can really credit the actor for, I feel. To all those who do not share my opinion on Rush's performance here, ask yourself this: When the girl with the coin is taken aboard the Pearl for the first time, and you see the group of pirates standing in front of her, could you have guessed which one of them was supposed to be the captain before he is introduced as such? Me neither. I supposed the real captain was sitting in his cabin somewhere and she would have been taken to him. Compare this to Dustin Hoffmann's portrayal of Captain James Hook in "Hook". There is no way that anyone could have mistaken him for anyone but the pirate captain, even if they had been unaware of the (Disney rendition of) the Peter Pan story.
The British army captain is portrayed with appropriate stiffness, I feel, but that's still not much of an acting accomplishment. The British governor is also adequately portrayed, but is too trivial a character to really improve the movie much.
Then there is the god-awful plot, which keeps dragging its anchor all over the place. The main surprise (the story behind the curse and all) is given away fairly quickly, and the eventual outcome is fairly predictable. Even the trick with taking a coin to become invincible could be seen coming a mile away. Then there is Depp's youthful appearance in the movie. Taking into account the plot point that the curse was put into place some 10 years before the start of the story, Sparrow would have looked *even younger* when he was captain of the Black Pearl. A mere teen boy! While the rest of the crew looked *exactly the same* (i.e. fairly old) back then because they have been preserved by the curse in the meantime. Sparrow would have looked terribly young to have been captain of the crew the way he looked during the movie, let alone 10 years before!
Logic takes a (distant) backseat in this movie. The whole point of Jack's ship attacking the Pearl *knowing* the crew was invincible was beyond me. It might have been to damage the ship, but that didn't play any part either during the rest of the movie. As it was, this was just 15 minutes of meaningless filler. Likewise, the decision by the Pearl's crew to surrender once they had lost their immunity from wounds was perplexing. They were all going to be hanged anyway! What's the point of surrendering, then? The British soldiers fighting on upon first realizing the pirates were immortal was odd as well (as was the length of the fight, given the advantage the pirates had as long as they could not be harmed).
As it was, there was not nearly enough plot to fill what felt like almost 3 hours. A lot of going back and forth for no good reason, plus goofy decisions made by the characters, filled a lot of time better spent otherwise (as in not watching this film!).
As for the humor... why bother including it if you won't try to make the jokes as funny (and in-character) as possible? About the only one I liked was the one at the start when Sparrow confidently steps off his sinking ship onto the walkway. The rest just seem improvised (the slapping joke with Sparrow's exes, the interminable eye-joke with the one-eyed pirate). Maybe an accomplished comedy writer could have been included in the writing team to ensure more and better jokes?
The comedy takes away from the horrifying feel arguably intended by the skeletal scenes. Perhaps it would have been a good idea if the writers had made a choice between horror with the occasional moment of relief and comedy with some horror elements (as portrayed in the "Monkey Island" adventure series). As it is, the writers seemed to be going back and forth. Sparrow should have been either a copy of Guybrush Threepwood, or a competent pirate with a sense of humour. Not kind of both at the same time, since that just doesn't work.
Many of the action scenes convey the same sort of bored indifference portrayed so fittingly by many of the key actors.
Oh, but the SFX are gorgeous, of course. Scoring the only points I can give this godawful excuse for a fun summer action/adventure movie. Makes me wonder if the people doing the SFX had somehow been isolated from the rest of the process of making the film, since none of feel of the rest of the movie is present in the skeletal scenes.
The verdict: 3/10