Run aground
Mark Steyn
Pirates Of The Caribbean 12, selected cinemas
Acpcording to co-writer Terry Rossio, irates Of The Caribbean was created as 'a very classic. Jane Austen-style, bodice-ripping romance'. It isn't, in fact, based on an actual classic Jane Austen bodice-ripper like, er, Pride And Corsehy, Mansfield Basque, whatever, but rather it's adapted from a Disneyland theme-park
ride. The standard complaint about Disney's parks is that you have to queue two-and-a-half hours for a four-minute ride. With the movie version, you queue four minutes for a two-and-a-half hour ride. That's not necessarily better value. One comes away with a renewed respect for the superbly disciplined narrative compression of theme-park attractions.
The story, by Rossio and Ted Elliott (writers of Shrek), concerns a pirate ship operating with a skeleton staff — a crew of undead sailors labouring under an Aztec curse. They kidnap a demure young English lady, the daughter of the Governor of Port Royal, in the hope that she can free them from the curse. The Royal Navy set off in pursuit. Unlike the original ride, the same things come around again and again: Johnny Depp is always being captured and always escapes; boarding parties are always boarding ships and getting into interminable battles, even though there's no dramatic tension — the skeleton crew can't be killed, after all, so what's the point of running your sword through 'ern?
Still, Disney vacationers will be heartened to know that many features of the ride have been retained, including a stop in Tortuga, where bawdy strumpets straight out of Northanger Abbey ply their trade. As Cap'n Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp also evokes the spirit of the original, if only in his weirdly woozy gait, like that of a fellow staggering off a white-knuckle theme-park ride and regretting he'd had that second taco. Otherwise. Depp seems to have modelled his pirate on the mascara of Adam Ant and the modulation of Clare Short. As far as the lattees concerned, he may have been shooting for Keith Richards, but the vowel sounds wander a little in his spirited attempt to keep up the drollery through to the final showdown with Geoffrey Rush in an Aztec treasure cave. Depp beards Rush in his lair, but he doesn't rush layerin' his beard. It's the tiniest beard you've ever seen: two exquisitely braided, beaded strands hanging off his chin. If you laid them side by side, they would make a very convincing Brazilian wax with novelty piercings.
In Depp's hands, Cap'n Jack is more of a swishbuckler than a swashbuckler, and the more he swishes the more it's the movie that seems to buckle. He's worked so long and so hard and so ostentatiously on multi-layering the micro-details of his character that he leaves everybody else looking like preliminary sketches. It's like Medea joining Charlie's Angels: it's bound to leave the other gals looking a little underwritten. So, in this movie, it's not just the skeleton crew who are reduced to bare bones. There's Depp plus The Villain (Rush). The Girl (Keira Knightley), The Sneering Constipated Brit (Jack Davenport), The Colonial Governor (Jonathan Pryce), The Parrot, The Deaf Mute, and an army of the scurviest sea dogs who ever sailed the Caribbean. If that's really where we are. I found myself thinking of points north. As Barry Manilow put it:
Bermuda Triangle It makes people disappear.
And in this film, they do. Jonathan Plyce is lost under his wig. Keira Knightley, so lovely in Bend It Like Beckham, shows alarming signs of becoming this decade's Julia Ormond: despite the occasional feminist flash — 'I'm gonna teach you the meaning of pain.' threatens one pirate. 'You like pain?' she scoffs. 'Try wearing a corset' — she seems weirdly placid whenever the camera alights on her. Even Depp's huge mountain of tics and traits isn't much help in the end. He appears to have spent so much time working on his character — or characteristics — he's none left over for the piracy. He leaves most of the action to the bit players, and all the love interest to his sidekick Will, played by Orlando Bloom. Mr Bloom looks appropriately enough not unlike Erroll Flynn, but without the panache and playfulness. He professes to love Miss Knightley, which is just as well, because, if he didn't profess it, you'd be hard put to tell. Depp can't be bothered hitting on her. Geoffrey Rush muses on ravaging her but never gets around to it. The Caribbean is clogged with ships that pass on the Knightley.
Depp's misdirected energies get to the heart of the problem: it's not a pirate movie, so much as a movie about pirate movies, a post-modern gloss on bad teeth and swinging yardarms and anti-social attitude. Like Depp, Gore Verbinski (director) and Jerry Bruckheimer (producer) have lavished time and money on all the details, which are impressive, give or take the odd lapse (the HMS Dauntless). Looking at the bilge water, one appreciates that one is looking at the most expensive bilge in screen history. But you can't see the wood for the shivering timbers. Verbinski takes well over two hours to tell a story with no real thrills, no anticipation, no surprise, no genuine predicament, no sense of danger, and no feeling that there's anything at stake. He threw the baby out, but kept the bilge water. Not a good idea.
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