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| Poster
Description: Top from the left: Kiera Knightley holds a medallion.
Orlando Bloom smoulders. A moustached Johnny Depp wears a red bandana with a
gun in each hand crossed in front of him. A bearded, scruffy-looking Geoffrey
Rush wears a black, floppy hat, holding a skull. "Pirates of the
Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" is written in black on a scrap of
parchment with a bandana-wearing skull, and crossed swords in the middle.
Bottom from the left: Treasure glistens in the darkness, along with another
skull. Pirate ships are at war on the sea as pirates shrouded in shadow come to
the shore with their rowing boat. Trouble is afoot.
2003 was the
year Disney looked to its theme-park rides for inspiration. A part of me is
disappointed that they didn’t do more. Imagine an ‘It’s a Small World’ film. Actually, maybe not.
I didn’t get
to experience the POTC ride itself until 2007 during my holiday to
Florida when At World’s End was about to be released, but by then, Jack
Sparrow’s uncanny animatronic was the main highlight.
Before
writing this review, I was ready to call it overrated, but how has the Pirates
of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl film fared?
The
Director: Gore
Verbinski
The Cast:
Johnny Depp
– Captain Jack Sparrow
Orlando
Bloom – Will Turner
Keira
Knightley – Elizabeth Swann
Geoffrey
Rush – Captain Barbossa
Jonathan
Pryce – Governor Swann
Jack
Davenport – Norrington
Kevin
McNally – Mr. Gibbs
Mackenzie
Crook – Ragetti
Lee Arenburg
– Pintel
Zoe Saldana
– Anamaria
Certificate: 12A
Released
in the UK: 8th
August 2003
The Plot:
Saved as a
boy from a shipwreck, Will Turner (Bloom, The Three Musketeers) is now a
talented blacksmith in Port Royal. He is also hopelessly in love with the Governor’s
daughter, Elizabeth (Knightley, Official Secrets), who still has the
gold medallion she found around his neck the day he was rescued. Jack Sparrow
(Depp, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald) has come to Port Royal
to find a specific ship with black sails. Word has it the ship is captained by
a man so evil, hell itself spat him back out, and his crew along with him.
The
Review:
The screenplay, particularly the dialogue, is
smart and cheeky; this is not particularly surprising as writers Ted Elliot and
Terry Rossio also co-wrote such gems as Aladdin, Shrek, and The
Road to El Dorado. With that in mind, they must have had a blast stringing
together such memorable conversations in Black Pearl as:
Will Turner: This is
either madness... or brilliance.
Jack Sparrow: It's
remarkable how often those two traits coincide.
Or,
better yet:
Barbossa: [talking to Will Turner] Who are you?
Jack Sparrow: No one.
He's no one. Distant cousin of my aunt's nephew twice removed. Lovely singing
voice. Eunuch.
Yes, you read that right. Remember, this is from a
Disney film! Depp gets all the best lines as the lovable rogue, Jack Sparrow, and
some of them are easier to say than others as the bloopers prove. His
charisma carries the film, preventing it from becoming a run-of-the-mill slice
of action fantasy. Bloom (arguably at the height of his popularity₂) plays our dashing,
earnest hero, and Knightley plays a capable damsel making the most of her
bizarre situation.
You know,
being kidnapped onto a ship crewed by undead pirates.
 Ugh. You can almost hear Barbossa’s finger joints clicking.
The CGI used
to capture the skeletal crew looks a bit rubbish, but Geoffrey Rush’s
performance as Captain Barbossa keeps their predicament grounded. Also, Barbossa is probably one of the most
eloquent swashbucklers I’ve seen in film, while still staying true to the
dialogue we’ve come to expect from pirates – again, thanks to Elliot and
Rossio’s fabulous ability to turn a phrase:
Barbossa: For too
long, I've been parched of thirst and unable to quench it. Too long I've been
starving to death and haven't died. I feel nothing. Not the wind on my face nor
the spray of the sea. Nor the warmth of a woman's flesh.
[steps into
moonlight becoming a skeleton]
Barbossa: You best
start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner... you're in one!
Yup. That
bit still gives me chills.
Barbossa and his cursed men are a result of
their lust for treasure, but it’s easy to almost feel sorry for them, too. Two members of the crew, Pintel and Ragetti,
offer more sympathetic insight into the life of a cursed pirate, while also
providing comic relief in the more intense scenes. Ragetti (played by Crook,
before he became Worzel Gummidge) has
a wooden eye because he can’t afford a glass one, something the pair even
discuss when looking to their future after their curse is lifted. It
also provides one of the more iconic moments of the whole film, during a
frenetic canon battle where the good guys have a distinct lack of, er, canons.
These battles
are rollickingly good fun while on board the ships, but the stunts during the Black
Pearl’s attack on Port Royal now look fake, even silly, by today’s
standards, as men in white wigs perform perfect forward-flips to avoid the
explosions.
Watching it
for what has to be the thousandth time, I realised something that made me
quite sad. Black Pearl was a significant risk during a time when pirate
films were pretty much dead in the water. Since then, we’ve seen four sequels
that, arguably, got progressively worse, and Disney’s main ploy now is soulless
remakes of its animated classics. The Haunted Mansion failed to make any
waves, further proving Disney won’t dare to use the more obscure aspects of
their empire for entertainment. They
prefer safety because profit trumps anything new and potentially brilliant.
In
conclusion, though its effects may not have wholly stood the test of time, Pirates
of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is a fun and sassy romp that
Disney just wouldn’t dare to make nowadays. Furthermore, I have changed my mind
– this film is more underrated than overrated.
The Verdict: 3 STARS OUT OF 5
₁ As terrified as I was as a girl by these pirates, they
captured my imagination. I distinctly remember writing a story at school about
a girl who visits a dilapidated theme park haunted by – you guessed it – ghost
pirates, who are kept alive by a cursed ring. I got good marks for that
one.
₂ I should know, ten-year-old me had a massive crush on Orlando
Bloom at the time. I had two large posters of him in my room, one of him as LOTR’s
Legolas, and another as Will Turner on my ceiling…until it fell on me.
Sources:
Film poster
“It’s a
Small World” ride walkthrough (Disney World, Florida)
The
colourful careers of Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio
The Road to
El Dorado (2000): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138749/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_wr#writers/
Quotes from
the film
Pirates of the Caribbean bloopers
Elizabeth
Swann realises she’s in trouble (picture)
The new
Worzel Gummidge
Ragetti gets
a fork in his wooden eye (picture)
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