Thank god! Finally, a fun summer movie that's all about being fun! I think with the important dramas and serious movies that have been released over the past few years, the art and depth is coming back to cinema (well, most cinema...) This is a good thing; but consider where this has been a downfall over this past summer: Superman Returns, X-Men3: The Last Stand. Fun action/adventure movies don't have to be anything more than fun! With Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, director Gore Verbinski was able to create a fun, exciting, funny adventure movie that took itself seriously enough to actually be a quality film. The second one, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, cashed in on the first one also to be a fun adventure film. True, it's not as good as the first (few are,) but it is enjoyable visually as well as exciting to watch.
Many critics are complaining that this one suffers from being too similar to the first Pirates. I disagree with the fact that this is a negative aspect. Fantasy adventure movies normally follow a pretty basic outline. It's okay that this film is somewhat formulaic because it's a formula that works. The Pirates' franchise is one that is thriving on the fact that Johnny Depp, who staggers around as Jack Sparrow... sorry, Captain Jack Sparrow, definitely carries this movie. We all know (despite the ending) that Sparrow cannot get killed off because the franchise would sink without him. The film also brings back all the characters that we love from the first one. It does what a lot of sequels do and brings back the funny semi-bad guys as sort of on the good side (there really are no sides for pirates.) Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook come back as Pintel and Regetti, the two clumsy, cross-dressing pirates who were cursed in the first one. Ex-commodore Norrington, Jack Davenport, comes back to join, and all your favorite cast members from the first are the ones who oddly enough survive through the second. And that is okay, why? because we know and love these characters. Fantasy movies don't have to make logical, real world sense. It's about pirates, the Cracken, and a man with tentacles growing out of it's face- that's like complaining that Harry Potter really can't fly because it defies the laws of physics.
Disney displays for the second time this year computer generated genius. The entire face of Davey Jones, played by Bill Nighy (NOT the Science Guy... Nighy played, among other things, washed up pop star Billy Mack in Love Actually,) is C.G.! That may not seem exciting to you if you have not seen the film yet, but I spent a good portion of his screen time trying to figure out how much of his face was makeup and how much was C.G.. I was very impressed to find out that he had no makeup on at all. The special effects in this film will definitely get an Oscar nod, if not a win, because they are absolutely incredible.
As for Orlando Bloom, who returns as good boy Will Turner, and Kiera Knightly, his fiancee, Governor's daughter, and leading lady Elizabeth Swan, they are, as in the first one, just simply there. I tended to like Knightly better in the first one; she had sort of a nasty streak to her in this one.
The biggest difficulty with this one was not that it was over 2 hours long, but that there is a lot of story that needs to be explained which may get very confusing at times. The first movie had a very simplistic curse and a very basic solution. This film had all sorts of complex backstories and thick accents that were sometimes hard to understand (including the amazing performance by 28 Days Later's Naomie Harris as the voodoo woman, Tia Dalma.) That aside, THE BIGGEST complaint I have with this movie is the fact that it DOESN'T END! It suffers from the same thing the Matrix sequels did (besides being completely horrible) in that it combined the last two films into one story. It was very easy here to end the saga of the Dead Man's Chest, and start up a different story, which you find out at the end (or if you check the cast list on IMDB,) in the third movie. But instead, they will drag out Davey Jones' story through the third film.
This movie is so much fun, and so incredibly visually appealing that it would be a crime not to see it in the theatres. If you liked the first Pirates, you're bound to like the second because although they are similar, it's exciting to see the new adventures they go on (and probably more exciting to have actually made it!) Plus, you could really put anything to Klaus Berdolt and Hans Zimmer's music and it would be exciting (thank you, Hans, for keeping the score!) When you think of an adventurous summer movie you'd like to go see, this should be at the top of your list, savvy?.
Overall Grade: A-
No comments:
Post a Comment