Verbinski’s ghosts and pirates is the guilty pleasure of the summer.
My life has already gone full circle. 24 years after my freighting California trip to Disneyland where big plastic pirates were chopping away in the sky, while I lay helplessly in a boat below being protected by my sword less mother. Today, I find myself watching a film based on the guys with one-eyed patches and wooden legs, normally I would add that I don’t remember the last time I saw a good pirate adventure, but the folks behind Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World seem to have an inkling when the pushed there release date way past of this Disney production.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl gives us a breath of surprising fresh air into a genre that looked as dead as the Western, this swashbuckling adventure features plenty of candy for the eye—cool looking ships, fun looking costumes, sword fights and awesome CGI transitions of pirates into skeleton friends. But where the folks at Disney got it right was with a stroke of genius by casting an actor in top form inside a fun story about a pirate with a cool name Captain Jack Sparrow who has walked the plank one too many times and the domino affect of angry pirates looking for the last piece of gold to bring them back to life goes from the hands of the good-looking youths to the bad of pirates with bad intentions.
If you look back at the career of actor Johnny Depp (go here to do just that) you’ll witness a career of characters which already merits a lifetime in acting achievement award, his newest foray appears to be a continuation the sun-stroked personas found in the movie that never got made in Lost in La Mancha. With a little mascara around the eyes and some gold capped teeth, Depp owns this film with his interpretation of the most fun pirate, who appears to a big fan of the spirits both—as in alcohol and as in phantoms. Geoffrey Rush (Lantana) provides the films other delicious performance while the female lead played by Keira Knightley (Bend it Beckham) looks disturbingly a lot like Depp’s old fling Winona Ryder with a Hollywood cool Jennifer Garner look and provides a couple of good “i-see-a-ghost†screams. Accompanied by a tangy score, this film holds itself up, but the extremely long and repetitive middle point and every scene without Depp is somewhat a hard watch, but minus the irritation, you’ll find yourself sitting down, letting your mental guard down and enjoying this number.
I think that director Gore Verbinski has finally got a solid credential to his filmography, The Ring was good for box-office, but was a turn-off as an English language remake and unexpectedly the idea of a freaky tape doesn’t measure up to the simplistic pirate tale. With the insertion of comedy and adventure this film is cool; in fact for some families this might be the best alternative to an actual trip to the land of Mickey.
