Film Review | Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Dead Man Swimming

by Thomas Delapa


For the fourth voyage of Pirates of the Caribbean, producer Jerry Bruckheimer set sail with a new director at the helm, a slimy new villain and a salty leading lady. But don’t shiver your timbers, mateys—flighty Cpt. Jack Sparrow is back at the wheel, this time with zombies, mermaids and a load of mascara in tow.

Subtitled On Stranger Tides, this waterlogged swashbuckler sends Depp and crew on a—wink, wink—quest for the legendary Fountain of Youth. With three-time director Gore Verbinski, as well as stars Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom, wisely abandoning ship, new skipper Rob Marshall (Chicago) goes overboard to revive a foundering franchise that by now should be sleeping with the fishes.

The new cast netted Ian McShane as the infamous Blackbeard, who’s enhanced his piracy with voodoo powers and a super-sized sword. Barely onboard is Penelope Cruz as Blackbeard’s daughter, whom Sparrow deflowered in a convent and now vows revenge. Hamming it up from stem to stern, Geoffrey Rush got his King’s Speech transfer and returns as Sparrow’s peg-legged rival Barbossa.

Screenwriters Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio treat the rudderless plot like driftwood. Rather than be beaten by the hated Spanish, England’s King George hires Barbossa to find the Fountain of Youth first, with Blackbeard’s ghostly ship in vague pursuit. Blackbeard has “zombified” his crew, which is a pretty fair description of Pirates’ remaining ticket-buying public. In another lethargic nod to Depp’s original homage, Keith Richards flies in for a cameo as Sparrow’s dad, just long enough for a crusty in-joke. (“Does this face look like it’s been to the Fountain of Youth?”)

Exactly where all these pirates and privateers are going is as clear as mud, since almost every scene is an excuse for a tsunami of stunts, dull swordplay and special effects. An unusually bewitching scene with a singing mermaid quickly morphs (literally) into a screaming attack by a school of mermaids, digitally spawned into man-eating monsters.

With Knightley and Bloom in dry dock, the surviving stars are castaways in an inane story that gets old before anyone finds the Fountain of Youth. Cruz—evidently pregnant during the production—comes off as peaked, if not seasick. Depp’s tipsy, swishy shtick should have been deep-sixed two movies ago, but Disney and first mate Bruckheimer have never been shy about wringing the last drop of box-office booty from their franchise mega-hits.

On the surface, one might think that McShane—so suavely menacing in TV’s Deadwood— might be able to singlehandedly keep this Pirates voyage afloat. But like everyone else, he goes down with ship, victimized by a moribund story and scurvy dialogue.

Aye, avast the S.O.S. On Stranger Tides is a washout.


--------------
5/23/11

Film Review | The King's Speech

The Mouth that Roared

by Thomas Delapa


Despite the upper-crust, high-flown tone, The King’s Speech may stick in your throat, especially those not amused by the all-too-common History Lite style of filmmaking. This made-for-export British import says too much, emphatically, yet ends up saying precious little.

The king in question is England’s future George VI (Colin Firth), son of the aging King George V (Michael Gambon). As the duke of York in the prewar 1930s, “Bertie” can hardly utter a word without stammering, let alone annunciate the king’s English. And in the new 20th-century era of radio and microphones, Bertie’s humiliating impediment echoes through every ear in the U.K. The failure of conventional speech therapists leads Bertie and his pert wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) to Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), a saucy, unorthodox Aussie who’s never at a loss for words.

Tom Hooper, the award-winning British TV director, gives his royal subjects exactly the opposite treatment that won him kudos in HBO’s John Adams and Elisabeth I miniseries. He trades in-depth complexity for glossy simplicity, downsizes wit into glibness. In 100-odd minutes, Bertie battles his stutter, silences his insecurities and majestically finds his inner monarch, all crowned by his ascent to the throne. While this biopic is delivered as King George’s story, the filmmakers take revisionist liberties, putting words in Firth’s mouth which practically shout out: “My kingdom for an Oscar!”

A regal actor, Firth deserves better. When Logue first meets Bertie, pain and shame are written all over his face as he struggles to spit out his words. When he can speak, he’s alternately self-deprecating (“Timing isn’t my strong suit”) and angry, fuming with rage against Logue’s insolent quips. But after an auspicious prologue, screenwriter David Seidler recites rote formula, regurgitating the uplifting teacher-student lessons from the My Fair Lady/Educating Rita school of dramatics. The pronounced twist here is that it’s the Aussie commoner who’s Henry Higgins, while Bertie is the linguistically challenged timid prince with a frog in his throat.

In a movie calculated to serve up a checklist of pop talking points, Logue also pulls up a comfy Freudian couch in his ruddy, womb-like office. Lurking unspoken behind Bertie’s stutter are deep but not-too-dark childhood insecurities. He only has to face up to his bullying father and older brother (Guy Pearce) and tell them off, at least symbolically. When Bertie finally works up the courage to shout out “I have a voice!” all the audience can say, in unison, is “By George, I think he’s got it.”

While quite a few modern accounts address Bertie’s brother, the infamous and ill-fated King Edward VIII, as a man who romantically, even heroically, chose love over the throne, Hooper dismisses him in few words as a weak and frivolous playboy. The less said the better about another saggy caricature, Timothy Spall’s bulldog-jowly Winston Churchill.

Little is left unsaid in The King’s Speech, especially not the barrage of four-letter words that Bertie blurts out as damn-breaking shock therapy. Not only is the king a man of the people, but this blue-blood bloody well knows how to curse.

-------------
1/7/11