With these clearly delineated standards to follow it's amazing Disney green lighted (green lit?) the first Pirates of the Caribbean film. Obviously the film criticism community hadn’t reviewed these standards when they were reviewing the first one, since it received near universal acclaim. I believe a good deal of that approbation came out of the surprise factor. Before it was released, Pirates had that kind of worried buzz that surrounded Titanic before it swamped us all.
It was an expensive special effects-laden action movie starring Johnny Depp, who had spent most of his career demolishing his non-indie film cred. Clearly studio heads were nervous about his performance and there were lots of worried articles about arguments over Depp’s dental work to make his teeth look pirate-y, a clear sign of a studio desperate to diminish expectations. The movie was based on a Disneyland ride, for chrissake.
In fact it was part of a master plan by Disney to launch film series based on three of their amusement park rides. The other two rides were The Country Bears and The Haunted Mansion. Unless you have kids (and even if you do) you have no reason to remember either of these films. Haunted Mansion was one of those Eddie Murphy vehicles the reviews of which mostly centered on the theme “remember when Eddie Murphy was funny?” The Country Bears, based on Disney’s animatronic banjo-playing bears stage show, got such universally wretched reviews that I actually seriously considered not buying it for the Library system, unprecedented for a Disney film.
The result was that most reviewers were completely stunned to find the first Pirates to be utterly entertaining. Johnny Depp was epic as Jack Sparrow, a booze-soaked scalawag with his brains scrambled from too much rum, sun, and the lash (as opposed to the classic British Naval recruitment promise of “rum, buggery, and the lash”, this being Disney and all). Was there a plot? Can you remember it? Come on. Be honest. No, you can’t. You remember being entertained. You remember something about a pearl (but only because it was in the the title), or a boat, or a chest of gold, and half-dead ghosts, and Keira Knightly’s bosom and Orlando Bloom’s swashbuckle, a talking parrot, and a cheeky monkey.
Article comments