Saw the new Johnny Depp “Pirates,” thing Monday, on a date with my wife. Didn’t hate it. It was a pleasant enough evening and, really, if you’re parents, any time you can get out of the house by yourselves…
So what follows is less complaint than sincere wonder.
The movie is a weird and remarkable thing, three hours long, much of it unbelievably convoluted exposition and a plot with so many layers of backstory and quasi-mystical weirdness it’s pretty much incomprehensible.
If you don’t believe me, consider the critical consensus, of which this passage from Nathan Lee of the Village Voice is a clinical example:
“Of all movies, this is the last you’d expect to talk and talk and talk and talk, but on it goes, everybody yapping about what they just did, what they’re about to do, what they should be doing, what it will mean if they do X instead of Y. Dude, just [bleep]ing do it.”
That’s according to the adults. If the box-office numbers are to be believed the kids - you know, the modern American kids with the allegedly microscopic, PlayStation-addled attention spans - the kids are gobbling it up like Skittles. It’s the number one movie in America.
I can’t explain it. Scott Tobias of The Onion takes a stab:
”The Marx brothers classic Duck Soup contains a bit that applies nicely… When presented with a treasury report, Groucho’s Rufus T. Firefly, the newly appointed President of Freedonia, declares it so simple that even a 4-year-old child could understand it. “Now run out and find me a 4-year-old child,” he says. “I can’t make head or tail of it.” As a consequence of trying to turn a theme-park ride into a 463-minute trilogy, the Pirates movies are freighted by so much convoluted mythology and supernatural hoo-hah that perhaps only the very young can understand their dream logic.”
Whatever. If they can wade through this, they can do high-level math.
One more thing: Pretty much the entire cast and most of the sets look like they’ve been dipped in used motor oil. Some of the salts have oceanic plant life growing on their faces. So how come Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightley get through the whole briny mess looking like they’re in the green room waiting to go on “Regis and Kelly”?
