Every minute a sucker is born
I am hard-pressed for words because I’ve just had the life force sucked out of me. Yes, I was yet another victim of the gruesome Walt Disney flick, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”. The movie was released in the theatres near me only this week and I had unwittingly fallen prey to the Disney propaganda machine. Surely, a movie that is on its way to becoming one of the 10 most successful box-office hits of all time can’t really be that bad, could it?
Turns out that P.T. Barnum was right. Every minute a sucker is indeed born and yesterday night, it was my turn. Atleast, Barnum was a merciful showman. His shams mostly involved midgets, freaks and a poor, paralyzed woman whom he exhibited as George Washington’s 160 year old nanny. One might even be generous enough to describe his shows as mildly entertaining. But I wonder how cruel one has to be to recommend a movie like the Pirates. As scene after scene of mindless characters were unveiled before my teary eyes, I began to empathize with any one of Hannibal Lecter’s many human entrees during the last moments of their lives.
When Captain Jack Sparrow was devoured by a grotesque underwater creature, I could not help but pray that he be properly digested in the monster’s belly. I was even grateful for a few moments to this despicable, multi-tentacled leviathan until the not-so subtle hint was dropped that Sparrow could actually be rescued alive. For this, however, you just have to wait for the third edition of this never-ending and mind-numbing multi-part series. Pirates gets an A+ for pure, unadulterated bull crap. Savvy?
P.S: I would recommend that one read the Wikipedia stories behind the principal characters of the movie before heading out to the theatres. Otherwise, you, like me, are likely to have nary a clue.
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I loved that movie. It’s chock full of real pirate lore, welds perfectly into the first movie, and weilds plenty of the over-the-top action sequences I was hoping for in that movie.
Sure, it didn’t have deep characters, or intense emotional conflict, but it was about pirates! Pirates for crying out loud! The only memorable artistic piece about pirates was Treasure Island, and that book was terrible, quite frankly. Pirate on young-boy man-love is a horrible story.