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Year:    2003
Studio:  Walt Disney Pictures
         Jerry Bruckheimer Films
Feature: 4/5
DVD:     4/5

Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is a movie based on the Disney ride. But since the ride itself has no story to it the screenwriters had a lot of freedom to develop an original story. It stars Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley.

Elizabeth (Knightley) as a girl helped rescue Will Turner (Bloom) and fell in love with him. Cut a decade later and she's a young aristocratic woman -- the governor's daughter -- and Will a lowly apprentice blacksmith. They have an attraction for each other but class keeps them apart.

Enter Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp), a pirate captain without a ship and looking for one to steal. Jack is captured and put in jail. That's when the pirates of the Black Pearl, led by Captain Barbossa (Rush) arrive. The Black Pearl is Jack's former ship whose crew mutineed and marooned him a decade ago.

The pirates are in Port Royal for something and end up with Elizabeth. Will enlists Jack's aid and off they go to rescue her. Lots of action ensues as the three main objectives intertwine: Barbossa wants to break a curse, Will wants to rescue Elizabeth, and Jack wants his ship back.

It's a very well done movie. Big budget action movie with a PG-13 rating. Lots of special effecta and fighting and explosions. But also a good story behind it and I appreciated all the little elements once they were point out in the commentaries. Johnny Depp is amazingly good and I've never really thought of him as being all that great an actor.

Overall a highly recommended movie.
Extras

Audio Commentaries
-- Director Gore Verbinski and Actor Johnny Depp.
-- Screenwriters Stuart Beattle, Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Jay Wolpert.

Standard commentaries. They point out some of the elements from the Disney ride, the filming experience, the story, and other things. At the end of the screenwriters commentary one of them explains the timeline leading up to the beginning of the movie.

-- Jerry Bruckheimer
-- Actors Keira Knightley and Jack Davenport

These are partial commentaries. For Burckheimer it encompasses a handful of scenes. For Knightley and Davenport it's about 1/3rd of the movie. Only the parts of the movie with commentary are shown so you'll skip over lots of scenes. One thing about Knightley is that she's quite talkative.

Disc 2 Extras

An Epic At Sea: The Making of Pirates of the Carribean (38 min)
Fly on the Set (21 min)
Diaries
  Producer's Photo Diary (4 min)
  Diary of a Pirate (10 min)
  Diary of a Ship (11 min)
Below Deck: An Interactive History of Pirates (22 min)
Blooper Reel (3 min)
Deleted Scenes (19 min)
"Moonlight Serenade" Scene Progression (7 min)
Image Gallery
Pirates in the Parks
  Walkt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (18 min)

There's a bunch of other stuff that's Windows only.
Copyright (c) 2006 Kevin C. Wong
Page Created: March 2, 2006
Page Last Updated: March 5, 2006