July 9, 2003 | The unwieldy title suggests a flurry of last-minute second-guessing by nervous marketing executives. And the sprawling length – two hours and twenty minutes – very nearly qualifies the film as way too much of a good thing.
But don’t let any of that keep you away from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. This rollicking, roisterous rompisn’t merely the very best movie ever adapted from a theme park thrill ride. (A minor distinction, I’ll grant you, but a distinction nonetheless.) It’s also an improbably delightful and sensationally exhilarating action-adventure, the most satisfying swashbuckler to bound across a movie screen since Burt Lancaster shivered timbers as The Crimson Pirate back in 1952.
Working from a clever screenplay by Shrek scripters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, director Gore Verbinski(Mouse Hunt, The Mexican) offers a fleet and funny sideshow of old-fashioned yo-ho-hokum, complete with spirited swordfights, crafty cutthroats, bounteous booty – no, not that kind of booty; this is a pirate movie, remember? – and distressed damsels.
Better still, the filmmakers enhance the familiar elements with some artful revisionism. For example: The chief damsel, played by Keira Knightley of Bend It Like Beckham, can defend herself with a sword, or at least a bed-warmer, whenever she’s really, really distressed. And the cutthroats are not just scary but downright supernatural, thanks to the curse of the title. Indeed, when they display their true colors by moonlight, their fearsome appearance explains why this is the first PG-13 film ever released by Walt Disney Productions. (Note to parents of small children: Consider yourself duly warned.)
The main attraction of this three-ring circus is Johnny Depp’s spectacularly campy performance as Capt. Jack Sparrow, a flamboyant scalawag with a penchant for piracy and an appetite for scenery. Festooned with dreadlocks and a braided beard, and sporting more mascara than you’d find on an ’80s Brit glam-rocker, this batty buccaneer has the woozy grandeur and slurred-yet-precise diction of an indignant drunk who’s bent on talking his way out of a DUI arrest. And yet, even though you’re never certain whether his swash will buckle during moments of crisis, Captain Jack remains as game as he is gamy, sliding through tough scrapes and hairbreadth escapes with preening insouciance. He’s either too bold or too brain-fried – or, quite possibility, both – to ever acknowledge the unlikelihood of his success.
Captain Jack enters the movie by sailing a leaky dinghy into the harbor of Port Royal, a 17th-century British base in the Caribbean. He blithely disembarks just before his boat sinks, fully confident that he can swipe another vessel – like, perhaps, the H.M.S. Interceptor, the fastest ship in the Royal Navy fleet, which is conveniently moored nearby – all by himself. Not surprisingly, he winds up in the local jail, where he is sentenced to remain only until he can be hanged.
As it turns out, however, Captain Jack’s incarceration is a stroke of luck. He’s in the wrong place at the right time when the pirate Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and his scurvy crew arrive aboard their dreaded Black Pearl – the very ship that Barbossa usurped from Captain Jack eight years earlier – to attack and invade Port Royal. Barbossa sails away with precious cargo: The beautifully plucky Elizabeth Swann (Knightley), who is the daughter of the local governor (Jonathan Pryce) and, more important, the beloved of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), a handsome blacksmith and part-time swordsmith.
Anxious to rescue Elizabeth – even though she’s betrothed to a prideful British Navy commodore (Jack Davenport) – Will frees Captain Jack from jail, then joins the redoubtable buccaneer in commandeering the H.M.S. Interceptor.
And after that, things get really exciting. Set sail for your nearest megaplex, and you’ll see for yourself.
