Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightly
Have I Seen It Before?: Oh, sure. If you hadn’t seen it by fall of 2003, you were way behind the times. I even managed to stick around for the sequels, although for the life of me I can’t think of why I might have done this.
Did I like it?: I’ve often been struck by the difficulty to view a movie without measuring it against the context of the anemic sequels it spawned, or how we all feel about the star of the film. Given that this film legitimized the continuing of both long past the point we should have allowed, it’s hard not to reflexively judge the film as a mistake. Had this film tanked or not resonated with an audience, we’d probably not have to brace ourselves for more big budget missteps from Depp, or really have to hear about him at all.
But the film does resonate, though. The idea that a theme park ride could create such a singularly watchable film is further evidence that pretty much no one knows what they’re doing when they go about developing a big budget motion picture. The Lone Ranger (2013) should have been great on spec (and has much of the same creative talent), but wasn’t, and if anyone thought this would make great spectacle before the movie premiered, they would have been deemed a lunatic.
That’s because the movie is only occasionally interested in its source material. A shot here or there is taken from what visitors to Disney parks had seen for decades, but the movie is really about a character perpetually outmatched by the world around him, singularly possessed by a quest to regain the best parts of himself, using only his wits to win the day.
There’s also a love story with Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly (Natalie Portman?)… You know, for the kids.
If only the sequels could have understood what made the first film work. If only Depp could have avoided letting this level of movie stardom go to his head. Maybe we would have gotten another movie approaching the fun displayed here, but, as I indicated above, getting even one film this good was more than we could have hoped for.