AmateurMovieReviews.com

By Janie Blank

My husband and I have a place in the city and nearby is a very nice movie theatre. The kind where you can by a beer. That is our main criterion. We are much more into live theatre than movies but it was Friday late afternoon and we had no plans so walked over and tried to find something worth seeing. We had heard quite a bit of hype about The Pirates of the Caribbean. I have always liked Johnny Depp so we decided to go for it.

We bought our beer, we bought our popcorn and settled down for a fun show. It started out quite lively with lots of action and I will say that we seemed to follow the action pretty well. I have heard a lot about Keira Knightly but actually had no idea what she looked like. She was both beautiful and a good actress. Probably better than the part demands. She reminds me of a young Brooke Shields. Her part of Elizabeth was definitely well done. I am not sure I have ever seen Orlando Bloom before either, although I have heard his name as well. He also was quite handsome and good in his part of Will. Johnny Depp is always Johnny Depp although we both thought he was pretty well over the top in this movie. He plays the lead character of Captain Jack Sparrow. On the one hand he seemed to play a ladies man but on the other he sashays around and wears eye makeup like a drag queen. I found it quite amusing. I think my husband thought it a bit overdone.

We also thought Jonathon Pryce did a good job as the provincial Governor and Elizabeths father. The way the pirates pillage and behave is not supposed to be overly realistic so you kind of get caught up in the humor of it. Johnny Depp or Captain Jack Sparrow has some hilarious scenes throughout the movie. There is loads of action, some incredible special effects, some science fiction and even some black magic. The action and suspense are what I suppose they consider the right mix for a summer blockbuster movie.

The action starts in Port Royal, in Colonial America and progresses to Tortuga in the Caribbean. It is always hard to do a movie review without giving things away. Same with a book review. How do you tell everyone what is good or bad about it without giving away the plot?

When we entered the theatre and watched this movie, we had no real idea that this was a sequel. As I said we are basically live theatre goers. We see only the most occasional movie. We actually got quite caught up in the movie and it seemed to be leading somewhere but then we pretty much felt like we had hit a brick wall. By the end of the movie it becomes quite clear that there is going to be a sequel to this one. A completely new character appears and pretty much that is the end. We were left quite baffled. It was just a completely unsatisfactory end for us!

When we left the theatre I went over to the popcorn guy and asked him if he understood the movie. I told him we just did not get it at all. He looked at me for a moment then asked if we had seen the first one. The first one I asked? Obviously we had no idea there was a first one. We had just somehow missed that entirely! He said you have to see the first one to get the second. Oh my! The funny thing was that we really did not feel we had missed a thing until the end.

Well, needless to say, the next thing we did was make a trip to the DVD department at a local store and found a copy of the Pirates of the Caribbean- the Curse of the Black Pearl. It took us a couple of weeks but we finally found the time to watch it and sure enough. The new character at the end of the second movie is really a character from the first one who returns and sets up the third movie that I am sure is due out next summer!

I cannot wait to see Johnny Depps makeup in that one!