Review: Pirates Part Three

Yesterday I loaded up the family minivan with various children and trekked to the local uber-movie-complex for the purpose of subjecting ourselves to the latest offering from Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise starring Mr. Depp and company.

The next three hours consisted of all kinds of action, romance, twists and betrayals, interspersed with fabulous and plausible computer-generated imagery. Recounting the specifics of the plot seems mostly irrelevant - there a couple of groups of pirates, some shifting allegiances, a trip through the underworld, some feckless British types, and a sea goddess with a temper. With a few exceptions it felt like everything from the previous two ovies had been put in a shredder and reconsituted.

Mr. Depp plays the same shuffling, lovable rogue, Jack Sparrow. Aside from some artsy weirdness in the underworld sequences - vaguely reminiscent of French avant-cinema - his talents are underutilized this time around. Orlando Bloom, Kiera Knightley continue to look very handsome. But many of the gags, both action and comic, seem overdone and familiar by this point.

Two highlights: A sight gag involving a midget (little person? little pirate?) and a bazooka which occurs early in the movie - and the appearance of Keith Richards as the "pirate king". I leaned over and explained to my oldest daughter that he was the guitarist in a very famous rock band, but I might as well have explained that he was the assistant undersecretary of economics, for all it mattered to an 11-year-old.

Later, last night we caught a few moments of a show on the History channel that anlyzed the archetypes and mythic motifs of Star Wars. This is actually a conversation you can have with kids - they enjoy it, and it's a great intoduction to literature. Who is the mentor figure in Harry Potter? Who makes up the "sidekick duo" and chorus in Lion King? They were quite involved, until the point where my daughter suggested that we break down the Pirates movie we had seen earlier. And ... although there are some congruent elements ... it just didn't quite hold up as well.