Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

February 9, 2004

Contrary to popular belief, it’s PIRATES, not NINJAS, that are so totally sweet that you’ll crap your pants.

I’ve always loved pirates. Well, ‘always’ stemming back to when I first saw The Pirate Movie. I loved that movie so much that I started trying to watch other pirate movies – because I thought they must be just as cool. Unfortunately, most other pirate movies suck. Maybe if I tried to watch Roman Polanski’s Pirates! again, 20 years later, I would be more impressed than I was then…not fucking likely though.

In any case, Pirates of the Caribbean is no Cutthroat Island – it’s a bloody entertaining film. (Not literally bloody – British slang bloody!) It was far more action-packed than I expected, which is a pretty tall order for any film over two hours long. There really weren’t any draggy bits. I fully intended to only watch half of it one night, then watch the rest the next day, but I found that I really couldn’t just turn it off in the middle.

For the life of me, I can’t think of any film that Johnny Depp has ever been bad in – or even so-so, for that matter. No one else could have been Jack Sparrow, that’s for damn sure. Everyone else in the cast was fairly interchangeable – I could have enjoyed the film just as much with Kevin Spacey as Captain Barbossa, Jake Gyllenhaal as Will and Kristin Kreuk as Elizabeth. The rest of the cast didn’t matter at all – just Johnny Depp. Other reviews have said all kinds of things about Depp’s performance – gold teeth, gay pirate, Keith Richards impersonation, “swishbuckler,” blah blah blah – the only thing that matters was that he was entertaining to watch. He was nominated for an Oscar, wasn’t he?

As a matter of fact, any scene without Jack Sparrow was as boring as Hell. Scratch that – any scene without Jack or that little monkey. It goes without saying that a sequel is already in the works – not sure how they’ll make it new and exciting without treading over the same ground – what are the odds that there’s yet another haunted pirate ship roaming around the Caribbean? I don’t care as long as the monkey gets a role.

Throughout the whole thing, I couldn’t help but think to myself – “Gareth has a wooden eye!” and “I wonder if Gareth’s the Team Leader of the pirates?” Those of you familiar with The Office will get what I mean.

As it’s fairly unlikely that I will ever be able to force myself to sit through The Country Bears or The Haunted Mansion, I’ll make the assumption right now that Pirates of the Caribbean is the best film ever made based on a Disney Land ride…although I’m holding out on final judgement in the event that Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride makes it to the big screen.