Ray Pride

We're past thumbs-up and thumbs-down: now it's all about the movies that extend their own digit to the audience.

What does a hundred, a hundred-twenty million dollars get you? Over the Fourth weekend, I ran into all too many friends who wanted to share their enthusiasm for "Charlie's Angels 2" 's air-conditioning. Haven't seen it, haven't felt it, I had to admit. (But thanks, as always, for the word-of-mouth.)

Why do we forgive? We forget a lot of the safe, unshapely megadecamillion dollar sequels that litter the multiplexes, but why be forgiving of scurvy movies? Audiences already expect to be rooked. The circus is in town, this big weekend only, come see the amazing lifelike remake! Years ago, a movie like "Nashville" might make someone like me want to make movies or write about them, but the second "Flintstones" movie? "Scooby-Doo"? Cinema, sayonara. There's an old joke about the man who sweeps up after the elephant when the circus comes to town, he's at the bar complaining to his pal about sweeping shit off the highway day in and day out. His friend says, "Why don't you quit?" To which he replies, shocked, "What? And give up show business?"

I've been trying to define a proper critical vocabulary for writing about cynical, clumsy product, but most reviewers seem to fall in one of two camps: saying, in so many words, that it's shit, then filling another 1,300 words of a review with doodles about its cultural (in)significance. Or, saying, "It's just a movie. It's just entertainment. It's mindless fun. It's brainless fun."

Puh-leeze. Down this path lies Australian website freelancer Paul Fischer, who committed one of only two pull quotes in the newest "Charlie's Angels 2" print ads-- "explosive, exciting and just out-and-out hilarious"--and who was the only sentient being on earth who was willing to praise the crass stinkbomb "The Sweetest Thing." (Check a DVD box cover near you.) It's a pirate's attitude, and the Jolly Roger they're flying keeps the ad industry healthier than the movie business.

In the almost two hours of "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," directed by Gore Verbinski ("Mouse Hunt," "The Ring") and produced by Jerry "My Films Have Worldwide Revenues of Over $12.5 Billion in Box Office" Bruckheimer I have one insignificant quibble: Someone is referred to ungrammatically as about to be "hung" rather than "hanged." (I had to struggle to come up with that one.) I've read some early reviews that complain about pacing, but "Pirates" is one of the most outrageous, goofy, giddy, hilarious juggling acts I've witnessed in a movie theater in a long, long time. Plus? It's smart. It's the kind of movie where you exchange rapid looks with your date, just to check out that smile.

Johnny Depp has the time of his life as Jack Sparrow, a self-promoting pirate whose schemes alternate between epic laziness and intent inspiration. He wants one thing in life: the return of his ship, The Black Pearl, which now sails the seas with an undead crew led by Geoffrey Rush, never one to pass on a serving of ham. Nut-brown, with as much kohl clotted around his flashing eyes as a Bollywood deity, gold-toothed, word-slurring, with amulets knotted into his dreads, Depp plays Sparrow as an unlikely, adorable, crazily inspired mix of Keith Richards, Pepe le Pew and Hunter S. Thompson. The "A" plot stirring around Depp's antics involves Will Turner, an orphan and dashing shade of Sparrow, who longs for the hand of Elizabeth Swann, daughter of the island's governor (Jonathan Pryce). She's played by Keira Knightley ("Bend It Like Beckham") who resembles a willowy Natalie Portman, if she were human.

Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who wrote "The Mask of Zorro" and "Shrek," bring the same knowing wit, which should cause mutinies against those who give the jokes away. There's a plot, there's a criminally good cast, and only one joke I'll give away: Sparrow pulls a fast one on another character. Depp looks at him, with a perfect physical balance of head-cock, body-sway, and wide-eyeing and comic timing, pointing to himself, uttering but a word: "Pirate." I laughed until I wept.

It's the first PG-13 movie released under the Walt Disney banner, and "Pirates" is rich with the implication of raunch, and the scares are orchestrated with consummate glee. Beginning a few months ago, movie studios began "security" procedures at advance screenings, usually by posting a rent-a-kid somewhere in the audience with a battlefield-type nightscope to keep an eye on shiny-shiny objects and furtive behavior. The bored anti-pirate at the "Pirates" advance and I found ourselves with our eyes in the same spot at one moment, when the tow-haired little boy in front of me responded to a particularly efficient and nasty bit of fright by quaking with audible sobs. Yes, dear reader, he had been scared shitless, his bloodstream enriched with adrenaline, his nightmares littered with suggestion, and he will remember this movie for the rest of his life. I can't wait to read someone else's review of his first movie in twenty years or so.

"Pirates of the Caribbean" opens Friday.

(2003-07-09)

Also by Ray Pride

Tip of the Week
Mohsen Makhmalbaf's gorgeous, surreal but all-too-real "Kandahar" tells the story of an Afghan woman's return to her homeland with the Taliban still in power.
(2003-07-02)

Short Runs
This week's limited screenings
(2003-07-02)

A bigger splash
Ludivine Sagnier is the scrappy 24-year-old Parisian actress who stars in "Swimming Pool," an almost-too-clever, superficially genteel thriller of twists.
(2003-07-02)

Short Runs
This week's limited screenings
(2003-06-25)

Smells like green spirit
(2003-06-25)

Out of the Past
(2003-06-25)

Short Runs
(2003-06-18)

Fille fatale
(2003-06-18)

Meta fear
(2003-06-18)

Short Runs
(2003-06-11)

Comedy killer
(2003-06-11)

Coming up for air
(2003-06-11)

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