yo ho ho

[freckles_and_doubt]

This morning, recking not the demands of encyclopedia entries, I dragged my long-suffering mother off to see Pirates of the Carribbean II: Old Uncle Cthulhu And All, as a result of which I am able to state that its Tentacular Discomfort Index at times exceeds the green on the maternal ick-o-meter. However, as she would be the first to admit, there's a lot of consolation in gratuitous Johnny Depp. (Me, I was brung up, at least through post-adolescence, on a solid diet of Lovecraft, and thus find tentacles not only acceptable, but inevitable. Likewise Johnny Depp).

I didn't have high expectations of the movie, as a result of the sustained diss-fest currently being enacted by any critic within a half-mile of the film, and consequently* I thoroughly enjoyed it. The usual list follows.

• Okay, first off, is that a new Disney intro/trademark/logo thing, or have I simply failed to notice until now its incredible length, pretentiousness, ego, over-glitziness and entirely Harry Potteroid aerial train shot? Nothing like having the first twenty seconds of the film grab you by the collar and scream "DISNEY!!!!" in your face to the accompaniment of cheesy music.
• And, while on the subject of Disney: when the revolution comes and the company and all its works are first up against the wall, carved on its shrivelled little black heart will be found a simple mantra: PATRONISE THE HELL OUT OF THE EXOTIC OTHER. In Disney's world, non-white, non-American cultures may at times be exotically appealing (viz. the dead sexy voodoo-lady), but they are inevitably primitive, laughable, barbaric and easily outwitted by the forces of Civilisation. (Actually, thinking about it, the poles of identification in this movie are interesting given its big-budget American-ness: the major love interests are English, and Jack Sparrow occupies a strange cultural niche of his own. I have a sneaking suspicion that Jack's occasional ineptitude and Will's gormlessness offer the viewer a level of distance from their antics: it's not a clear-cut heroic identification, and one of the things the film invites us to do is to laugh at the British quite a lot.)
• Rampant cannibal cliches aside, I loved the escape from the village, with its giant swinging and rolling cages: classic physical comedy, beautifully timed, and with more than a touch of Goon Show in the cages running around with feet sticking out the bottom.
• Even more so, I completely adored the three-way sword-fight for heroes, damsel, key, box, Flying Dutchmen, pirates and water-wheel, which was choreographed with the precision and complete lack of reality of French bedroom farce: a gratuitous, self-indulgent ballet with its own comic inevitability divorced from all reason or logic. It's actually not as simple a pleasure as it seems.**
• I may be imagining things (or being distracted by the semi-naked!bondage!Orli), but I think Orli may have found a few more acting muscles somewhere. Little ones. He kinda almost manages to brood at some points. I'm actually beginning to think he's simply acutely self-conscious - he's unable to deliver a line in any way that doesn't suggest he's simply delivering a line. If you watch him rather than listening to him, his non-verbal communication is actually rather more convincing than anything he says. (And, no, this doesn't mean I simply think he's hot, since generally I don't, much).
• Any movie that can seriously present an octopus-headed Davy Jones playing melodramatic Gothic chords on a giant pipe organ with his tentacles has to have my vote.

Overall, this was a darker***, considerably more slimy film than the first one, and somewhat shot in the foot by its unrepentant EmpireStikesBackism, which leaves you too palpably groping for closure. I think that's an error: this kind of madcap swashbuckling adventure needs to stump up with some actual narrative gratification, or it limps too far away from its genre roots. Theory: I think I'm going to enjoy this film even more when I've watched the third one.

* this is possibly sheer cussedness.
** this is possibly a perception caused by my Structuralist leanings.
*** this is possibly the effect of Ster Kinekor's bloody feeble projectors.

Comments

[ex-wytchfyn.livejournal.com]

Rampant cannibal cliches aside

OMG YES! That movie was, like, so unfair to those 'cannibals'. Like, you know? Judging peaceful groups like the Carib and the Maori is, like, so unfair. An the movie's portrayal of, like, 'demon zombies' was so, like, orientalist. People pursuing a negative-energy lifestyle are, like, beautiful in their own way. We shouldn't, like, other them and stuff. As if they were different from us in some way.

;-)

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Hey! There's difference and difference, you know. And, like I'd ever espouse a crypto-post-hippy stance with all those "like"s... ;>

They weren't demon zombies. They were... crustacean-enabled immortal semi-fish men. Pirates. Whatever.

I don't have a Johnny Depp icon! Why don't I have a Johnny Depp icon? *makes icon feverishly*

Awesome Icon!

[tsukikoneko.livejournal.com]

:)

Re: Awesome Icon!

[bumpycat.livejournal.com]

It's the smirk that makes it t3h win! :)

[(Anonymous)]

"People pursuing a negative-energy lifestyle are, like, beautiful in their own way"

*snort*

My new mantra in dealing with Certain Colleagues. (Made all the more delicious in the knowledge that secretly I'm calling them cannibals and/or demon zombies.)

scroob

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

I liked the scene near the end when the ships lined up to jump over that big shark.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Rumours of strawberryfrog's status as a complete and total cynic are not, in fact, in any way exaggerated at all... ;>

I am unrepentant. I enjoyed the film.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Firstly, uncle Squidface McSquid playing the tentacular pipe-organ (that he has somehow stowed away on his capacious submarine galleon) is not just melodramatic and gothic, it is jumping up and down and shouting "look kiddies, this is the melodramatic gothic scene! It is melodramatic! And Gothic! What could be more gothic that this? Gothic, you hear, gothic!"

Secondly, (spoiler warning! Spoilers ahoy! Sixteen men on a dead man's spoiler!!) ...

Once characters start coming back from the dead left, right and center, where's the dramitic tension? They spend most of their time avoiding deadly situations, why bother if you can just pop back again? It's silly. My disbelief, heretofore suspended on wings of pyrotechnic absurdity, comes falling down. That plot has been done well in a few notable instances, all in the years BC (Greek Orpheus and Sumerian Innana, I am told there are also Japanese and Mayan versions), and not since. I am having some difficulty bucking it to this swash - did the scriptwriters simply paint themselves into a corner?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

it is jumping up and down and shouting "look kiddies, this is the melodramatic gothic scene!

Exactly! My info page refers. Interests: self-conscious narrative. (An interest, may I add, unshared by anyone else on LJ. I am a unique and beautiful snowflake.)

PotC is high camp, which means it's about melodrama, excess and complete generic self-consciousness. Of which, in my professional capacity, I approve, completely apart from the fact that it causes me unholy glee in private life.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

PotC is high camp, which means it's about melodrama, excess and complete generic self-consciousness.

.. and laying it on with a shovel, since the trowel wasn't big enough.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Which bit of the notion of "excess" are you failing to grok, precisely? Excess. OTTness. Hyperbole. Gratuitousness. You know, way too much of something, when you lay it on with the shoevel since the trowel wasn't big enough?

[bumpycat.livejournal.com]

Interests: self-conscious narrative. (An interest, may I add, unshared by anyone else on LJ. I am a unique and beautiful snowflake.)

Haha! Not any more! :D

[(Anonymous)]

Nifty icon!

scroob

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Sinfest has a lot to answer for.

[(Anonymous)]

You think I didn't know that? Hurt, I am.

[khoi-boi.livejournal.com]

I liked it a lot, as I said, but don't agree on the sexiness of the voudou lady. However, Keira as cabin boy left me... conflicted.