Ordinarily, what with this being a Tuesday and all, I'd do a rundown on worthwhile new DVDs. But since there is virtually nothing of even the slightest interest being released today--the most notable is a Katherine Hepburn boxed set highlighted by Undercurrent, a Vincente Minnelli picture that not even the most hardcore cultist cares about--I'll find something else to talk about.
Specifically, Pirates Of the Caribbean: At World's End. Paul had been looking forward to this--a surprise, since he seemed mostly bored with the previous entry, Dead Man's Chest--so off we went, looking for the type of action and derring-do a seven-year-old craves.
Almost three hours later, we were still looking. For a movie boasting the Disney brand name, this is a long, grim haul. It opens with a mass hanging--we actually see a pile of bodies straight out of Abu Ghraib photos, and one of the hangees is a boy of ten or so--and plods on from there, with endless expository dialogue meant to explain character arcs and plot points no one could possibly care about. (At least it has the wit to acknowledge this; at one point, Geoffrey Rush's character greets a particularly mind-numbing development by growling, "Aye, strains credulity, I grant ye." On the other hand, if the screenwriters were this aware of their tortured plot, why didn't they just start over?)
As Paul pointed out afterwards, "They didn't even have a swordfight until the end." Exactly. The bare minimum you could expect from a pirate movie is swordplay and action (and okay, maybe a bit of romance), but this movie just grinds along, like it's trying to invent its own pop mythology in the Star Wars tradition, but forgetting to include any real elements of entertainment. The action scenes--what few we get--are so poorly staged by director Gore Verbinsky that you can't really tell what's going on; they're all noise and spectacle, but no coherence. (If nothing else, this made me appreciate Sam Raimi's overbusy but cleanly-structured Spider-man 3.)
Whatever entertainment value this actually has comes exclusively from the actors. Johnny Depp is funny, but oddly misused--he feels like a guest star in his own movie. Geoffrey Rush probably gets the most screen time, which is all to the good, as he's the only person who seems to be enjoying himself. Jonathan Pryce, Bill Nighy and Stellan Skarsgard attempt to find actual human moments amidst the bombast, and almost succeed.
Regardless, Paul claimed he enjoyed it. Of course, when you're seven and you've psyched yourself up to enjoy something, you'll tell yourself you liked it even if you're secretly disappointed. But he was squirming in his seat a lot, and mostly seemed bored.
After experiencing this noisy, joyless machine, I wanted to rent the great Burt Lancaster vehicle The Crimson Pirate, to show Paul what a real swashbuckler is like. But the video store we stopped by was showing Mel Brooks' Spaceballs on their in-house system, and he seemed very interested. So we came home and watched it, and though he thankfully didn't get all the gags ("Okay, Doctor, why don't you go back to the golf course and work on your putz?"), he laughed out loud at Brooks' endless assaults on movie marketing. After all, he'd just been a victim of it.
