Romantic comedy meets campy horror film.

Rating: 6/10 (21 January 2004)

After watching Pirates of the Caribbean last night, I was very surprised to see that it had an IMDB rating of 8.0! Could THIS MOVIE really be one of the best 250 movies ever made?!? Then I looked at the voter breakdown, noticed that females gave it an average rating of 8.7, and the 1,041 females under 18 gave it a 9.5! Suddenly things started to make sense. A little sense.
*POSSIBLE SPOILERS BELOW* Basically what we've got here is a pretty typical story. The rich governor's daughter loves the poor blacksmith boy, and he with her, but she's supposed to marry the military man. The blacksmith boy is amazingly handsome, makes the most beautiful swords that you've ever seen, and is an amazing sword fighter, since he practices in his free time-- apparently against no one. The military man takes a role that's been popular in romantic comedies lately. He's not a horrible, slimy jerk. He's just not the type of guy that women want to marry. He's stuffy, always follows the rules, and there's nothing the least bit entertaining about him. Of course she ends up with the blacksmith. Yawn.
The story was incredibly predictable. The evil, vile pirates don't seem that evil and vile, perhaps because they were given too many comedic gags. Additionally, their fighting scenes looked like some sort of a cheesy video game. They never really seemed as real or threatening as they should have.
Bloom and the girl turn in average performances, as does Geoffrey Rush. I was really disappointed with that, as I expected him to really blow me away. Unfortunately, he either wasn't feeling it, or he didn't get adequate screentime.
Johnny Depp was quite good. He really brought some fun to an otherwise drab movie. Had it not been for Depp's performance, I don't think that this movie would have made half of the money that it did. If you DO watch Pirates of the Caribbean, watch it for Depp.
6.5 of 10, rounded down to hopefully drag this thing out of the top 250. :)