Pirates of the Caribbean -- surprisingly not bad.

[Zixar]

Zixette has this thing for Johnny Depp ever since seeing him in Chocolat. Sigh. Oh well, she puts up with my bizarre movies, so a little payback is to be expected. So, I grumbled along to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl last week.

I really expected to hate POTC:TCOTBP. For one thing, no movie should have a title TEN WORDS LONG. (Okay, so Dr. Strangelove's full title was 13 words, but still...) And a movie based on a forty-year old amusement park ride? Did no one at Disney learn anything from The Country Bears?

However, the movie was surprisingly watchable. Sure, there were plot holes, but Depp's weirdness plays right into this character, and Geoffrey Rush has just the right touch of bombast for the evil pirate captain Barbossa. The swashbuckling almost spills over into the now-overused Chinese wu xia/Japanese chambara motif, but stops short of being Hidden Treasure, Crouching Pirate. Of course, it had to star that other panty-moistener du jour, Orlando Bloom, whose prissiness as Legolas the Elf in The Lord of the Rings was mitigated by his awesome death-dealing archery. Here, he just doesn't convince as a master swordsman. He looks like he's doing a bad Errol Flynn impression the whole movie.

All that aside, it's still rates a B+. Worth a matinee showing, if not full price. I doubt it will translate well down to video, so if you have a couple of hours and six bucks to kill, you might be as pleasantly surprised as I was.

The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

[Steve Lortz]

One thumb and one hook, one big toe and one peg-leg UP!

Arrrrgh!

Love,

Steve

P.S. - Them that dies'll be the lucky 'uns!

[Steve Lortz]

By the way, Zix, I've got a set of home-brewed miniature rules and a scenario I call "Scurvey Dawrgs".

Captain Errol Hawkblood and Major Smothers of the Royal Marines are both out to rescue the governor's daughter, who has been kidnapped by the evil French pirate, Pierre l'Strange.

Two crews of pirates, led by Long John Silver and Yellowbeard, are out to find Flint's gold, buried under a heathen idol. The cannibal king and his boys are out to get an appropriate human sacrifice so their gods will chase the white men off.

And Ben Gunn is running around with a band of stuff-slinging monkeys.

Now I'm figuring out how to work zombie pirates into the game.

Diplomacy and back-stabbin' all the way around. Too much fun!

Love,

Steve

[Raf]

Finally got around to seeing this the other day. What fun!