The Jung and the restless (8/23/06)
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Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. [Gore Verbinski, 2006.]
Pursuant to a nefarious scheme hatched by the wicked corporate suits of the East India Company to, uh, put an end to all fantasy, or conquer the eighteenth-century world, or something, Evil Lord Tom Hollander makes his appearance on the picturesque Caribbean isle where we thought naively we had left our heroes Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley to live happily ever after — as indeed they might have, had the grosses not proved so spectacular that the inexorable laws of motion picture economics demanded Jerry Bruckheimer engineer a sequel — produces warrants for fabricated charges of aiding and abetting greasyhaired dudes with threecornered hats and gold teeth, and tosses our starcrossed lovers into the clink; the better to blackmail Bloom into tracking down Johnny Depp aka Captain Jack Sparrow — the only man, apparently, who can deliver into the greedy hands of the Home Office the eponymous Dead Man’s Chest; which, we discover presently, has been tucked away on a suitably well-hidden white-beached isle lost in the now-familiar endless romantic expanses of tropical sun and pellucid water [patrolled regularly by bloodthirsty cutthroats, painted aborigines in war canoes, and tentacled monstrosities], and contains the still-beating heart of Davy Jones himself [Bill Nighy, nighon unrecognizable in squidface][didn’t anybody here see
Oldboy? this isn’t funny any more] — captain of the legendary Flying Dutchman, master of yet another motley crew of CGI-augmented dead men, and owner of the rights, apparently, to Johnny’s soul, thanks to an improvident deal struck thirteen years earlier whose due date has now arrived.
Thus impressed into service once again, our heroes dutifully buckle up their swash, and, after a couple of hours of fairly entertaining adventures during which Johnny is decorated with the dreaded Black Spot, elevated to a god among cannibals, and gets in touch with his inner Good Guy, Orlando finds his father [Stellan Skarsgard; seaweed is a good look for him] aboard the ship of the dead, Keira ships out disguised as a boy [how Shakespearean], Naomie Harris does a most excellent turn as a Voodoo fortuneteller [cf.
The Matrix], and the world record for Most CGI Teeth And Tentacles [previously held by the giant octopus in
Deep Rising] is smashed by John Knoll’s merry men at Industrial Light & Magic, all concerned find their way to the ultimate [well: penultimate] swordfight on the, uh, Treasure Island. — Another sequel having been preordained, this can settle nothing: the scenario ends on an ellipsis; and everyone is now, has been, or will shortly be dead [though of course this is never terminal.] But the needle of the franchise, like that of Johnny’s magic compass, still points unerringly to the Heart’s Desire: sun, surf, sand, shekels, swords, sorcery, and lots and lots of suckers. And, though I’m not entirely sure how the writers plan on getting us out of the predicament in which they’ve left us, I sense, at a remove, the unacknowledged influence of the Firesign Theater; and expect that, after a few rousing choruses of “Yo ho ho and a bottle of hemp”, they’ll figure out how to haul this ragged bark to port. — Meanwhile, get me the number of their dealer: the Flying Dutchman left me cold, but I loved that swordfight on the rolling waterwheel; Keaton himself could have done no better.
____________Coming of age in Samoa (6/27/06)
