That Pirate Movie
Wednesday, July 12, 2006 - 5:30 PM
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I went to see the new Pirates movie Monday evening. It was a blast - the showing we wanted was sold out, so we got the next one, two and a half hours later. We went outside the mall and climbed a cliff... I bought some new dvds... some skittles... and then, because one of our friends had gone to the book store and picked up Jonathan Livingston Seagull, an easy-read classic about a high-flying seagull turned messiah that I'd always meant to read but had never gotten around to, we sat on the ground in the mall and had story time. If you've never read it and you want a short, quirky, allegorical introduction to Buddhism, I recommend grabbing a copy and setting aside a couple of hours.
Anyway... Pirates 2. It felt a little too long. The quips weren't quite as clever as in Pirates 1. The effects were near flawless, but not as flat-out cool as in the first one. The acting was actually better this time out (Orlando Bloom successfully portrays emotions!), but the movie's crowning performance - Depp's - felt very slightly more stilted than the first time out. Maybe because this time we knew it was coming.
The plot, though... the plot was stellar. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I thought that each character - and there were myriad characters - was, if not complex (though several were), at least perfectly formulated. The plot flowed from the characters. When someone betrays someone for something, it's not just a machination to make the movie go on (bladder-bustingly) longer: it's because it's what they would do in that situation. From a writer's perspective, the plot was - and I want to emphasize this - well-crafted. It was extraordinarily intricate, possibly enough to lose people. I heard complaints to that effect on the car-ride home. But if you manage to keep your head on straight and follow all the threads, all the threads make sense - a rarity in Hollywood's race for the lowest common denominator. Again, whatever you might think of the movie as a whole, from a writer's perspective, it was an intricate, well-crafted story, and for a writer, that made the movie a delight.
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