Saw Pirates of the Caribbean last night. It wasn’t the final print of the film; the music was still incomplete (but was about 95% there). This film, in a nutshell, is a blast! I checked my brain at the door once Bruckheimer introduced the screening, and retrieved it with my iPAQ (which they took away from me!) at the end of the film. As Captain Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp totally steals the show. He’s funny, entertaining, and a real character. Geoffrey Rush plays the cursed baddie, and is appropriately gruff… in fact, the two times in the film you hear “Arrrrrr”, they come from him. Delightful! Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley have pretty good on-screen chemistry as well.
The visual effects are handled by ILM, and they do an incredible job with them. I can’t even begin to describe how delightful it was to watch a swashbuckling swordfight between Rush and Depp, with them moving into beams of moonlight and seeing the seamless “reveal” of the cursed skeletons. As I had mentioned, the music was not complete, but most of Klaus Badelt’s score was in there, and it’s a romp. Those expecting a full-on orchestral effort will be disappointed, but I was expecting what I got. It’s like “The Peacemaker of the Caribbean”, and it’s a pure “Media Ventures” score, if there ever was one. But it works great in the film, and pushes it along. It’s a rather long film, running a little over two-hours. But I can’t say I was ever getting tired or bored, so that’s good news! And the way that they worked out classic “poses” from the Disney ride into the film, well, you’ll have to just see for yourself!