UNDEAD MONKEY PIRATE!  UNDEAD MONKEY PIRATE!

reviewed Mon, 07 Jul 2003

It’s been a more-piratical-than-usual time for me; a few weeks ago, me matey Tiffany and I went to see a go-go dancing interpretation of Treasure Island on board the USS Constellation.  It was everything you’d imagine a go-go pirate show to be and more (although it could have used more go-go dancing).  Eyepatches and go-go boots!  Peg legs and bikinis!  With all its nostalgic pop-culture references – “The Love Boat,” “Laugh-In,” “Benny Hill”, Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster (a pirate wrestles with a fake octopus) – my favorite probably went unrecognized by everyone else in the audience:  Long John Silver singing “I’m Mean,” from Popeye. Popeye is evidently the latest obscure reference for the true hipster (see Paul Thomas Anderson’s use of “He Needs Me” in Punch Drunk Love).  I was shocked and unreasonably proud that I recognized the song a good 20-odd years after seeing the movie.  (Click here to see some photos.)

So, anyway, I was all primed for more pirate camp, although I reluctantly conceded that, despite its great promise for true suckiness, there would probably be no go-go dancing in Pirates of the Caribbean.  I was surprised when, on the way into the theater, we were searched and wanded for cameras.  I even had to show my cell phone to prove it wasn’t the kind that could take photos.  I’d heard of this happening with preview screenings of big “event movies,” like X2, but, I thought sardonically, is this movie really that eagerly anticipated?  Uh, I guess so: by the time the movie started, the theater was packed and a huge crowd evidently had been turned away.  And I know not everyone was there ironically.

The movie starts out all boring British costume-drama-y, with boring British people being dull, but then Johnny Depp wanders in from a completely different -- and evidently much funnier -- movie, possibly even one where go-go dancing would not be entirely out of the question, because he looks like a drunken drag queen (maybe just around the eyeliner) and talks like Dudley Moore in Arthur.  He swans flamboyantly around the boring Brits (among whom, if you have BBC America, you may recognize Gareth from “The Office” and Steve from “Coupling”) -- whose movie’s idea of humor is to say the line, “You’re the worst pirate I’ve ever heard of!” twice -- and thankfully steals Orlando Bloom (who remains boringly British) away into his movie.  Depp’s movie is the kind of movie where pirates, in the midst of an attack, stand still, look directly into the camera, and yell, “AAARRRRRRRRR!” (although not nearly often enough for my taste).  The best “ARRRRR” comes from Geoffrey Rush as the evil pirate captain, playing it nearly as broadly as Depp; when the two go face to face, it’s like… well, remember how excited people were about the scene in Heat when Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino faced off for the first time ever on screen?  It’s just like that, except with pirates.

So anyway, Rush’s pirates are all undead, because they took some cursed gold, and there are a lot of cool shots where they wander into moonlight, which reveals their undead, skeleton selves, which was very competently done but made me miss Ray Harryhausen, because nobody does skeletons fighting like he does.  (I assume the whole undead thing is the movie’s creation; it’s been a very long time since I’ve been to Disneyworld, but I don’t think their attractions generally feature the living dead.  Speaking of which, if I ever went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, I don’t remember it, but I’m willing to bet that the song that several characters sing throughout the movie and then rapturously declare as “the best song I’ve ever heard!” is the ride’s theme song.)  And Rush has a swashbuckling monkey who even wears a puffy pirate shirt (this is where, if Tiffany had been with me, I would have leaned over to her and whispered, “Monkey pirate!  Monkey pirate!”), and then the monkey turns out to be undead also (this is where I would have whisper-shouted to Tiffany, “UNDEAD MONKEY PIRATE!  UNDEAD MONKEY PIRATE!”), and for my money, you can’t beat an undead monkey pirate… except maybe with a go-go dancing undead monkey pirate.  With an eyepatch.  And an even smaller monkey on its shoulder.

I think “undead monkey pirate” is where the movie achieves its true glory.  It doesn’t quite live up to its potential for really sucking; the pirate parts are too entertaining and Depp too intentionally ridiculous for that.  Nor is it really a good loopy parody; the boring Brits see to that.  It would have been much better had it been made solely for adults or if Disney had allowed a little more weirdness of the undead monkey pirate type to creep in.  Depp has a few subtly naughty moments that made me wish this movie had been rated “ARRRRR” instead of PG-13; one of his crew is a black woman with whom he’s clearly had some history, and when another crew member remarks that she shouldn’t be there, as it’s bad luck to have a woman aboard, Depp replies, “No, it’s better that she’s here”… while thoughtfully fondling a banana.  And at the end of the movie, the same crew member announces to Depp, “The Black Pearl [the pirate ship] is yours!” and Depp and the woman exchange an unmistakable look that even a couple members of this exceptionally dense audience caught onto.

Wasted potential aside, I was surprised to find myself entertained, and not always in a snarky, ironic way.  POTC:TCOTBP is an unexpectedly enjoyable adventure movie, and it lends itself well to Mystery Science Theater-type commentary.  You can’t ask for more than that.

This seems like a good time to remind you that National Talk Like a Pirate Day is September 19!

Audience rant:  A group of about 6 people came in 15 minutes after the scheduled start time – they hadn’t actually started the movie yet because they were having trouble getting everyone to sit the fuck down – and were appalled to discover that they couldn’t find 6 seats together.  One of them ended up next to me, and she carried on a conversation with her friend sitting five seats and two rows away from her, meaning she yelled into my ear, and when she wasn’t yelling, she kept repeating, “This sucks!” while looking expectantly at me, obviously waiting for me to commiserate.  Worst of all, she turned out to be one of those people who issues a verbal reaction to every goddamn  thing that happens in the movie: “oh no!”, “ha ha” (literally, she would say the words, “ha ha,” instead of laughing), or just “oh!”  And I mean everything:  a character takes a drink, and she’s all, “Uh oh!”  Do you ever think anything you don’t say?

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