 |
| Source: Wikipedia |
Pretty people shoot ugly ones who don’t die because of gold coins cursed by Aztec gods, who apparently exist and are pissed and never show up in the story so who cares.
Anyway.
The Caribbean, eighteenth century. Two awkward kids grow up into awkward adults, one obsessed with pirates and another obsessed with not being a pirate. There’s some subplot about unrequited love and political marriage and the health hazards of modern fashion, but that’s unimportant except to tween girls.
Disney knows why we’re here.
Explosions! Sword fights! PG-13 hijinks! Hans Zimmer-esque action/study music!
The plot sails briskly over choppy waters, plowing through contrived coincidences and logical leaps. Snappy writing, solid structure, and ingenious callbacks slice through the whitecaps of cracking good storytelling, till this overburdened barge of a franchise strikes the iceberg of artistic prostitution and sinks to the murky depths of mediocrity.
Overblown metaphors aside, Johnny Depp’s Keith Richards impersonation steals the spotlight and pawns it at twice the wholesale value. If you’ve paid attention to popular culture for the past decade, you might have seen this character in other Johnny Depp movies, as tepid copies of undiluted eccentric genius. The original remains the best.
Also, thanks to unusually bright moonlight, we’re privy to a history lesson in turn-of-the-millennium CGI. Why the computer-animated dead have eyeballs remains unexplained. To market toys? (Here, Little Jimmy, now you can play "Skeleton Pirate Abbot & Costello disemboweling British Regular Abbot & Costello!" Fun for the whole Manson Family!)
Ignore the sequels. This one holds up.
Anyway.
The Caribbean, eighteenth century. Two awkward kids grow up into awkward adults, one obsessed with pirates and another obsessed with not being a pirate. There’s some subplot about unrequited love and political marriage and the health hazards of modern fashion, but that’s unimportant except to tween girls.
Disney knows why we’re here.
Explosions! Sword fights! PG-13 hijinks! Hans Zimmer-esque action/study music!
The plot sails briskly over choppy waters, plowing through contrived coincidences and logical leaps. Snappy writing, solid structure, and ingenious callbacks slice through the whitecaps of cracking good storytelling, till this overburdened barge of a franchise strikes the iceberg of artistic prostitution and sinks to the murky depths of mediocrity.
Overblown metaphors aside, Johnny Depp’s Keith Richards impersonation steals the spotlight and pawns it at twice the wholesale value. If you’ve paid attention to popular culture for the past decade, you might have seen this character in other Johnny Depp movies, as tepid copies of undiluted eccentric genius. The original remains the best.
Also, thanks to unusually bright moonlight, we’re privy to a history lesson in turn-of-the-millennium CGI. Why the computer-animated dead have eyeballs remains unexplained. To market toys? (Here, Little Jimmy, now you can play "Skeleton Pirate Abbot & Costello disemboweling British Regular Abbot & Costello!" Fun for the whole Manson Family!)
Ignore the sequels. This one holds up.
143 minutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment