[EDITOR’S NOTE: In 2003, long before MovieManifesto.com existed, I spent my summer as a 20-year-old college kid writing as many movie reviews as I could. My goal was to compile them all into a website, possibly hosted by Tripod or Geocities, which would surely impress all of the women in my dorm. That never happened—neither the compiling nor the impressing—but the reviews still exist. So, now that I am a wildly successful critic actually have a website, I’ll be publishing those reviews on the respective date of each movie’s 20th anniversary. Against my better judgment, these pieces remain unedited from their original form. I apologize for the quality of the writing; I am less remorseful about the character of my 20-year-old opinions.]
God damn this movie is fun. There exists in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl an unadulterated joy of filmmaking so rarely found in the sullen cynicism of modern cinema. The film is crafted with skill and dexterity, fusing classically grand storytelling with a light-footed comedic grace. It is superbly acted, but even more, it is unapologetically cheerful, so that a genuine delight permeates each frame. This is a bold, effervescent picture, and it is an absolute pleasure to behold.
The film opens with an eerie sequence set on a ship sailing in a thick, opaque fog. A young girl spots the unconscious body of a boy among the rabble of a vessel destroyed by pirates; after he is brought aboard, she snatches an ominously engraved medallion hanging around his neck. Flashing forward a number of years, we find the girl is now the becoming Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley, of Bend It Like Beckham fame), the governor’s daughter, while the lad is the similarly dashing Will Turner (Orlando Bloom, Legolas of Lord of the Rings), a modest yet eager blacksmith. Though the chemistry between the pair is palpable, protocol intercedes, and Elizabeth’s father (played by a somewhat beleaguered Jonathan Pryce) spurs on a proposal by the stodgy Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport).
But this is no Jane Austen novel. For cruising the seas of the Caribbean is the notorious pirate ship, the Black Pearl, captained by the unscrupulous Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). After a vicious (though rollicking) assault on the local town, the pirates snare Elizabeth, along with her treasured medallion, much to the dismay of the smitten Will.
Floating amidst all this is the legendary and infamous Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), a skipper without a crew. With his scraggly goatee and unkempt haircut he seems to have wandered out of the latest Woodstock, but his wits are sharp as his blade, though not sharp enough to keep him from a jail cell before long. However, Will, gallant as ever, believes Sparrow to be the lone individual capable of saving Elizabeth, so he springs the buccaneer from his cell, and together they stea-, er, commandeer a ship and set off after the title vessel.
The kidnapping of Elizabeth is more than just common plunder, however. She is part of Barbossa’s complex plan to rid the crew of the Black Pearl of its terrible curse: Barbossa and his henchmen are in fact not living men but undead skeletons, and in the moonlight, their ghastly visage is revealed (this lends new meaning to the term skeleton crew). They wander fruitlessly in search of fruit and drink they cannot imbibe, and bonnie lasses have less to fear than they normally would. The unveiling of the pirates’ true nature is a particularly memorable sequence, in which Elizabeth wanders on deck of the Pearl to find a haunting, gruesome assortment of skeletal beings carousing in a lewd, boisterous manner. The sight is mildly disturbing but thrilling to witness, men half-lit in the ethereal moonlight with their flesh suddenly disappearing, leaving only grisly bone visible. Ray Harryhausen would have been proud.
The director here is Gore Verbinski, and he isn’t much concerned with subtlety. Pirates of the Caribbean is not a lazy, listless action flick but a rousing adventure fable, and Verbinski serves up the whole shebang. We get swordfights, double crosses, boat chases, talking parrots, men left to die on abandoned desert islands, evil pet monkeys, Jolly Rogers, parleys, chests of stolen Aztec gold, mutinies, and a pirate frantically pursuing his own eyeball. And did I mention one of the best performances in recent memory?
That, of course, would belong to Johnny Depp, who as Captain Sparrow embodies one of the most engaging action heroes since Sean Connery starred as that martini-drinking British agent. Simultaneously sporting an egotistic arrogance and a disinclination for bravery, Sparrow is admittedly a self-preservationist who, if he can save only one person, makes sure it’s himself. Indeed, there almost seems to be an undercurrent of lazy reluctance about his laissez-faire approach to heroism – upon seeing a woman drowning in the sea, he dives in and revives her, but pauses first to ask his fellow bystanders if they’d consider doing it instead. Yet there is an indisputable integrity about him, brought out especially by his sharp, quick-witted dialogue and irrefutable penchant for fearless acts of valor.
The key here is the tone. Depp has played the hero before, most recently in the Hughes Brothers’ From Hell as the astute Inspector Abberline. There, he was prudent and calculating in a nuanced portrayal heavy with deliberation. In Pirates, he’s light and breezy, articulating his lines with an unashamed enthusiasm. Had Depp taken things too seriously, Sparrow would have been a bore. As it is, he’s an iconic figure who’s marvelously entertaining.
Some of the credit must go to screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who pepper the movie with delectable bits of hilarious dialogue. “Savvy?” Sparrow asks constantly and rhetorically, reveling in the outmoded usage of the verb meant to inquire whether one grasps his meaning. Later, he finds himself trapped on one of those aforementioned infernal desert islands with nothing but barrels of rum for drinking; after discovering that his companion has torched the alcohol to start a signal fire in hope of a rescue, he asks impatiently, “Yes, but why is the rum gone?” That Depp is pitch-perfect with his delivery on all his lines serves only to enhance the humor.
Though Depp towers over the picture, the supporting cast proves more than capable. Fresh out of Middle-Earth, Orlando Bloom is uncannily convincing given his rather thin part; with Return of the King at the end of the year, his stock will be soaring. Geoffrey Rush has been aching for a part like this for ages, and he plays the iniquitous Barbossa with the proper combination of menace and farce. And Keira Knightley is suitably dazzling – she’s well on her way to stardom. Only Jonathan Pryce seems out of place as Elizabeth’s diffident father.
Though Pirates relies extensively on comic lightness to carry its load, there’s still plenty of action to go around, and Verbinski is up to the task of handling it. Of special note are the swashbuckling scenes, all of which are assembled with fastidious care so that they sparkle with vigor and innovation. Swordfights are somewhat rare nowadays, as either shootouts or martial arts battles are the preferred media for combat, thus making these sequences all the more refreshing.
Equally impressive are the movie’s special effects, which properly function to assist in the storytelling rather than substitute for it. The Black Pearl is a magnificent creation – a dilapidated vessel replete with sails like black Swiss cheese, it seems somehow malnourished, and it’s only logical that skeletons are onboard. Those skeletons themselves are wondrous simply in their activity, and there are some fabulous moments in which combatants dance back and forth out of the moonlight, their bodies seamlessly alternating between flesh and bone, swords slashing and parrying the whole time.
There are a few minor drawbacks. At 143 minutes, the film runs slightly long, and some of the fight scenes could have been trimmed. The central romance could have been developed a bit more, rather than essentially relying on the characters’ mutually good looks. And the ending, while satisfying, feels faintly forced.
But these are mere quibbles, easily overlooked with gems such as, after hearing a plea to the pirate’s code of conduct, an unmoved Barbossa saying of the code, “They’re more guidelines, really”. Pirates of the Caribbean is cinematic grandeur at its most majestic. It has all the tools, and it employs them with a reckless bravura to transform a simple theme-park ride into a dazzling spectacle of a film. Savvy.
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.