The likes of 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' have been rare indeed since the days of Errol Flynn. But forget him. This movie never asks to be taken seriously.
[With a correction over an egg-on-face case of mistaken identity.] A fast-paced, wild adventure with magnificent ships, fine locations (and sets), and a more than adequate period feel, this is a film for a big, big screen and the best sound you can find (we settled into our favourite seats in the Max Linder (French).
Young Elizabeth Swann, daughter of a British governor, gets her first inkling of the ruthlessness of pirates right at the outset as we join her on board a naval vessel making its way to her Caribbean island home.
There and then, as the crew haul a boy who survived the attack from the sea and mayhem looms out of the mist, we know this film is going to be a knock-out. It's the medallion the youngster is wearing round his neck which is part of the curse of the Black Pearl, the fastest and most feared pirate ship on the high seas.
The brief introduction over, almost no opening credits to worry about, the story takes off and doesn't stop for a second, full of action, good jokes, a fabulous treasure, spectacular fights on land and on sea and stunning special effects which never get in the way.
Johnny Depp as dare-devil pirate Captain Jack Sparrow; Orlando Bloom as the lad plucked from the waves turned blacksmith's apprentice, first-class swordsman, hater of pirates and ready to die for the governor's daughter; Geoffrey Rush as the wicked mutineer in command of the legendary Black Pearl; and Keira Knightley as Elizabeth, a heroine off the best of the old blocks, with brains and bravery as well as beauty: these four head an impeccable cast.

Though heads and other body parts fly and there's a wonderful gag with the cutlery, the gore is comic-book enough only to leave you with minor shivers regarding what a monstrous machine of war the early 19th-century flagship of the fleet must have been. The pirate attack on a garrison-port is just realistic enough to give you some notion of why the blighters were sometimes summarily hanged with scarcely a trace of a trial.

This said, the story is irredeemably absurd from beginning to end!
Unless you've miraculously missed all the trailers, magazines and other write-ups on the Net, you'll know that the curse has turned the crew of the pirate ship into the Undead, suitably horrible by moonlight with the rotting flesh hanging from their bones.
The villainous Barbossa (Rush) can undo this ancient Aztec (but of course) curse (official site; Flash) only by reuniting stolen treasures and, so he believes, liberally spraying the lot with Elizabeth's blood.
Almost every imaginable cliché is here and relished to the full; I will happily do so again. Schwarzenegger's a has-been, Orlando Bloom has got real style! That there's no point in His Majesty's Royal Navy doing ferocious battle with pirates who can't be killed is beside the point. That a most entertaining Johnny Depp and a sexy Keira Knightley walk bedraggled up a beach to get thoroughly drunk on it (and add to an already ponderous list of transgressions at Screen It! (parental review, one of my more perverse pleasures) bothers me not a jot. That Disney puts its name, with producer Jerry Bruckenheimer, to crime as justifiable action appeals to my sense of subversion.
That by the end, disbelief has not only been stretched beyond breaking point but walked the plank is one of the film's many virtues.
Director Gore Verbinski (last stop, 'The Ring') handles his cast and blockbuster budget material with such panache, helped by a noisy musical score attributed to so many people you don't know who to credit, that 'Pirates of the Caribbean' is pure family rubbish to be thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish.