Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, Keira Knightley

Though it’s based on a theme park ride, Pirates of the Caribbean is an actual movie. But you’ll wish it had the brevity of its source.

Johnny Depp stars in – and steals – the film as Capt Jack Sparrow, a swarthy, rum-loving pirate with the look and mannerisms of Keith Richards. He pairs up with a blacksmith (Lord of the Rings’ Orlando Bloom, the new Dermot Mulroney) to save a pretty girl (comely, corseted Keira Knightley) and the Black Pearl ship, now overrun by skeleton pirates, led by Geoffrey Rush. But all that’s
pretty inconsequential, as it’s more easily summed as thusly: Plan. Fight. Escape. Repeat.

The skeletons are the selling point, and they’re cool (though their emergence from the mist reminds one of The Fog). There’s lots of swordplay and even a mean little monkey. I’m convinced there’s a great movie here, but since the film is clearly a good 45 minutes too long, it’s merely just a decent one. But Depp’s idiosyncratic performance – reminiscent in oddballness of his Sleepy
Hollow role – saves it from being a total washout like other pirate movies before it, from The Pirate Movie and Roman Polanski’s Pirates to (shudder) Renny Harlin’s Cutthroat Island.

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Rod Lott is the publisher of Hitch Magazine: The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity.