Keira Knightley, whom Bend It Like Beckham is now turning into a global star, may be fine and earnest as the love interest here.
The governor of the Caribbean’s spunky daughter, she quite happily falls for a blacksmith (Orlando Bloom, who becomes the dashing, risk-it-all hero) - but she also falls off a cliff with the same delightful comic strangeness as Michael Palin did in Monty Python’s fish-slapping contest .
Thus she embodies the two tones of a film in which neither is allowed (by Gore Verbinski, the director of The Ring - the American remake) to obliterate the other, with the fun proving much more creative than the tension.
But, as the governor proves determined to squash pirates Jack Sparrow and Barbossa (Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush) - the latter has stolen Jack’s ship and, with his crew, has become undead - Depp plays up the high jinks at the expense of piratical credibility.
Fun though his lightheartedness and charm certainly are, he gives off not even a hint of danger, of nastiness, and, helped by his amusingly detached delivery, comes across less as seafaring monster of the Caribbean than foolish eccentric or camp drunk.
This is even allowing for the fact that our acceptance of pirates stems from seeing them portrayed as rogues rather than ice-cold plunderers, rapists and killers.
Depp is comprehensively out-pirated by Rush, who, despite his jokey-threatening burr, overblown stare and monkey clamped to his shoulder, at least infuses Barbossa with some darkness.
One of the exceptional features in the film is Barbossa’s ability to become a scary/funny clanking metallic skeleton, to move from flesh to bones and back again.
One of the treats is to watch the skeletal crew invading an English ship by clambering up masts and through portholes. Two of the crew, best friends, pirates so ugly they seem disfigured, enjoy some of the best jokes, including the search by the thin, unnerving one for the perfect eye.
Yet there are not enough big, soaring stand-out scenes (all the more noticeable because this adventure is 143 minutes long), and the film is better bedded down in the small moments of comic oddness, as well as in the serious, romantic thrust, which is handled with finesse by both Knightley and Bloom.
Too bad Johnny Depp missed his chance to be a great pirate, but at least he’s engagingly weird. Now, had this enterprise been handed over to Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton...
Verdict: Regular outbreaks of great fun, but short of big moments and a credible star turn from Johnny Depp.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Production Year: 1964 - Action/Adventure - Director: Cyril Endfield - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring:Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, James Booth, Michael Caine, Nigel Green
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Production Year: 2002 - Action/Adventure - Director: Vincenzo Natali - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Lucy Liu, David Hewlett, Anne Marie Scheffler, Joseph Scoren, Matthew Sharp, Jeremy Northam
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Feb 26th, 2004
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