More Surprising Than Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Being Made Is How Mundane It Is!

The Good: The film starts well and ends all right, Generally the acting
The Bad: No real character development, 3-D effects do not add anything, Ian McShane is underused, Movie lags.
The Basics: Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is a strangely slow-moving series of monotonous sequences that barely add up to a typical summer action-adventure film.


When I first heard about a film being made based upon a ride at Disney World, I was skeptical. The ride was Pirates Of The Caribbean and the film did not knock me out. So, when I heard that there was going to be a fourth Pirates Of The Caribbean film, it was hard for me to muster up the effort to care. Having now seen Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, it is hard for me to muster up the enthusiasm to write much about it, so this is likely to be one of my shorter film reviews.

Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides reinvigorates the franchise without the two characters that couldn't reasonably appear given how the last film ended. So, where in the Pirates timeline this occurs is a bit murky, though it is after the first trilogy. My main complaint with Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is that it is nothing viewers have not seen before. Moreover, it doesn't feel like much in the way of an organic movie. For sure, it looks fine (though the 3-D effects do not add very much to the movie, so shelling out for the 3-D version is not recommended), but rather than being a cohesive film it feels more like a series of frenetic events loosely connected by scenes where I didn't grow to care more about the characters. So, there's a chase followed by a swordfight followed by a mutiny leading to a battle at sea and then a climactic battle with little else in between. And after two hours, I didn't care a bit.

Gibbs, the first officer of Jack Sparrow's ship, the Black Pearl, is brought to trial in London where he is acquitted by Jack Sparrow himself, who is impersonating a judge. After a chase to elude the British soldiers and King George himself, Sparrow goes in search of a doppelganger using his name to recruit a crew for his new ship. Having lost the Black Pearl, Sparrow becomes interested in the impostor and fights with his double until he discovers that it is Angelica impersonating him. A former romantic interest, Angelica is searching for the Fountain Of Youth, which Sparrow recently had a map to. Dragooned by Angelica, Sparrow finds himself aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge working for the mysterious pirate Blackbeard.

While Barbossa, who now has only one leg, hunts for Sparrow, the Fountain and the two components needed to make the Fountain's water worthwhile (two chalices in the possession of the corpse of Ponce de Leon and a mermaid's tear), Sparrow leads a mutiny on Blackbeard's ship. Fighting officers who are mindless voodoo zombies for Blackbeard, Sparrow haplessly finds himself involved in rescuing a missionary, capturing a mermaid, and leading the Spanish (and English) to the fabled Fountain Of Youth.

Honestly, there's not much more to recount than the plot here. The rest of Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is nothing new at all. Sparrow does not grow, change or evolve in the course of the film. Similarly, Johnny Depp seems more subdued in the role of Sparrow, as if he is getting sick of playing slightly crazy or crazed. The result is that he slouches through the role and doesn't land the character with the sense of panache that made him so popular to begin with.

Add to that, the supporting cast is woefully misused or underused. Geoffrey Rush returns as Barbossa and his character is out for revenge. Having lost the Black Pearl and his leg to Blackbeard, Barbossa seems like he ought to be more angry than Rush plays him and this is an unfortunate twist for an actor who has such presence to him usually.

The same can be said for Ian McShane as Blackbeard. For sure, McShane has an amazing pirate look and he sells the appearance of Blackbeard. But his gravitas is entirely underused in the role. He kills coldly and he threatens members of the crew and his own daughter, but when he does it comes across as more mundane than terrifying or evil. That's not to say Blackbeard isn't evil; he is. But it is more his acts than the way McShane acts as him that sells him as evil in this film.

I've not been a fan of Penelope Cruz and her performance as Angelica in Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides did not turn me around on her.

As for the special effects, Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is adequate, but in no way extraordinary. Two of the major battles are cheated by being in darkness, so the effects department gets away with making some of the battles ridiculously simple and just keeping them moving fast to seem in any way extraordinary. But things like the arrival of the Queen Anne's Revenge in Whitecap Bay reminded me of The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader (reviewed here!).

Ultimately, this is pretty mindless summer fare and with over two hours of runtime, it feels long. In contrast, I saw this as a double feature with X-Men: First Class (reviewed here!) and while they are about the same duration, this felt about three times as long. I wouldn't even bother catching this for free on television.

For other Pirates Of The Caribbean films, please check out my reviews of:
The Curse Of The Black Pearl
Dead Man's Chest
At World's End

3.5/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Chicago: All Razzle Dazzle, Little Substance.

The Good: Good music, Moments of direction
The Bad: Film doesn't know what it wants to be, Character issues
The Basics: In a disappointing musical drama, murderess Roxie Hart hires a smarmy lawyer to get out of a death sentence.


There is something delightful sometimes in taking a minority position on a popular work. I do try to go into every experience open-minded, but sitting with my wife and watching Chicago, I was almost instantly turned off to the film. While I have no particular prejudice against musicals, I found myself underwhelmed by Chicago and am astonished that voters in 2003 thought this was the best film of the year. One suspects that the sheer star power associated with the movie pushed it over in many viewers' minds.

But the truth is, Chicago is a sloppy film and much of the blame for that may be placed squarely with director Rob Marshall. Marshall does not seem to know if he is simple recreating the stage play Chicago for the big screen - limiting his sets to stages for musical numbers, presenting things like blood during the dance numbers with kerchiefs, etc. - or if he is making a movie unlimited by a theater's four walls (cutting together shots inside and outside jail cells, mixing settings, etc.). The result is a jumble that is terribly unsuccessful. The best example of the transfer to screen working better would be The Phantom Of The Opera. In that film, when the Phantom takes Christine into the sewers, the movie goes from the theater to a sewer set and the lair is clearly different. By contrast, when this occurs in the stage production of The Phantom Of The Opera, the players are limited to dimming the lights and using dry ice to create the illusion of the sewers. In Chicago, outside a few shots that mix the cinematic potential of the stage play with stage-type imagery, much of the film is presented as if it were the stage play being caught on camera. And the camera work and editing are often frenetic, making the movie seem strangely desperate to sell how flashy it is without backing it up with real substance.

In Chicago, Velma Kelly is arrested after her stage show for the double murder of her husband and sister as the envious Roxie Hart looks on. Roxie returns to her apartment with her lover, who tells her he is leaving and generally berates her before she shoots him. Her husband, the dimwitted Amos, takes the fall until he realizes that the body on the floor is not that of a stranger, but of a salesman he and his wife knew. Roxie is incarcerated with Velma and Roxie soon learns the ways of the cellblock under Matron Mama Morton.

Mama has an idea on how to save Roxie's life, which is to hire defense attorney Billy Flynn. Amos and Roxie come up with every cent they can and Billy takes their case - despite them falling below his requisite $5,000 retainer. Soon, Billy is trying the case in the media and Velma is jealous because Roxie is now stealing the attention she needs to win her case. As the murderesses try to win the public's heart, Billy gets a trial date for Roxie and she dreams of being exonerated in order to pursue her dream of singing and dancing on stage.

Chicago might work as a stage musical and it could have worked as a film - even a musical - but the blending of the two mediums falls flat. So, for example, when the women on death row are singing about their crimes, they do a dance number within a framed jail set which seems very much like a set decoration. At various points, though, the performer flashes to a time and place outside that set to tell part of their story, only to come back within the theatrical sets. Sometimes, this is for just a single shot and the overall look is sloppy with the mixing of the two mediums. As well, there are some obvious and terrible bluescreen shots of the streets of Chicago which are appallingly bad.

As for the merits, the plot includes tangents involving Mama singing about how corrupt she is, another inmate exhausting her appeals and being sentenced, and the next flash in the pan arriving at the jail. The post-Roxie killer, played by Lucy Liu, has a single distracting song before Roxie thinks on her feet and gets the spotlight back. Part of what makes this so irksome is that Roxie and Velma are unlikable characters, with Billy being the archetypal smarmy lawyer who is also hard to root for. So, just because Roxie thinks on her feet does not make her a more likable character. She is still dim, conniving and a liar.

Amid plot-relevant songs, like one where Roxie allows Billy to throw a press conference where she is essentially his puppet as he plays the media to take Roxie's side, there are other numbers that might be impressive on stage, but fall flatter in the film context. Catherine Zeta-Jones presents a song and dance number as Velma wherein she shows Roxie what her routine with her sister on stage was. Zeta-Jones sings, dances and the camerawork is willed with grand moves and cuts which accent every thrust, bright-eyed smile and foot tap. The editing here is so choppy, though, Zeta-Jones could have simply been making individual moves, getting them on camera and having them cut together. In other words, the continuity of movement is broken up so badly that the scene looks awful. The impressive aspect to this scene would have been if it could have been done in one take, which is what theater performers are forced to do. In this context, the scene is assembled and is underwhelming for anyone who enjoys dance or theater.

On top of the unlikable characters who are out to save their own skin or make a lot of money off the suffering of others, no matter how unscrupulously they do it, the acting is not terribly impressive. Catherine Zeta-Jones's on-screen charisma seems to be based entirely on her bugging her eyes out during quick cuts in the dance numbers and Renee Zellweger plays Roxie Hart with the same annoying whiny quality as her character from Cold Mountain. And while Richard Gere and John C. Reilly hold their own with the singing and dancing, Queen Latifah's performance is utterly unsurprising given her start as a singer!

On the acting front is where Chicago is most overrated. Reilly's acting has him performing as yet-another working-class dimwit, which we've seen plenty of times before from him. In fact, we've seen that from Reilly about as frequently as we've seen Richard Gere play a charismatic man with sparkling eyes and a sexy smile. These are good casting decisions. But Zellweger, Zeta-Jones, Gere, Latifah and Reilly all flop here as actors as the viewer is entirely uninvested in any one of their characters. They shine as singers and dancers, which might surprise some viewers, but singing and dancing ability is not the same as acting.

The result is a period film that is a mediocre presentation of a stage musical, trying only half-heartedly to be something more than what it is.

For other musical films, please check out my reviews of:
The Little Mermaid
The Broadway Melody
The Nightmare Before Christmas

[As the winner of the 2003 Best Picture Oscar, this film is included in "W.L.'s Best Picture Project" which is available by clicking here!]

4/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my ever-growing index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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Despite A Bad First Experience, Memoirs Of A Geisha Is Worth A Second Look!

The Good: Good acting, Interesting characters, Wonderful cinematography
The Bad: Pacing is deadly dull, Few characters are made truly distinct.
The Basics: A visually wonderful, very slow film, Memoirs Of A Geisha is worth watching.


My wife is a big fan of Memoirs Of A Geisha and the first time we sat down to watch it together, I fell asleep. I mention that at the outset as an instant explanation of why I am not rating the movie as high as many others. If I fall asleep in a film, it is not a good sign because I tend to sit through just about anything and stay awake. That said, we recently gave it another shot and I not only stayed awake, I found myself quite engaged by it, even though it was incredibly depressing in parts and I wasn't in the mood for that type of movie at the time.

The reason for the second viewing was simple. While watching Inception (click here for my review!) with my wife, she kept noting that actor Ken Watanbe looked remarkably familiar. He has a great role in Inception as well as a decent role in Memoirs Of A Geisha, so she was eager to see him in the more familiar role afterward. Memoirs Of A Geisha is based upon a novel by the same name and it is worth noting that I have never read the novel, so this is a very pure review of just the film.

Early in the 20th Century in Japan, two young girls are sold by their parents, who die shortly thereafter. Chiyo is separated from her sister and settles into a funk. She is abused by the lead geisha in the house, Hatsumomo, who is happy to sneak around with her boyfriend in a most un-geishalike fashion. Chiyo grows up, but in the process exacts revenge upon Mameha (Hatsumomo’s rival) by destroying her prized kimono. Chiyo encounters the Chairman as a girl, which causes her to develop a strong enough crush to make her want to become a geisha herself.

Mameha, returning to the geisha house as an adult, decides to make a wager with the debts Chiyo has run up and vows to make her the most successful geisha in history. As she begins to learn the ways of the geisha, she develops the poise, confidence and grace to try to attract the Chairman, but becomes waylaid by the politics surrounding the geishas and the outset of World War II, which prompts Sayuri (as she is known at that point) to flee for her life.

Memoirs Of A Geisha is a beautiful film, but it is dreadfully slow in parts. Things that might otherwise seem confusing, like Chiyo/Sayuri’s name changes are not hard to follow so long as one is awake, but the outset of the movie is incredibly depressing. The film is an atypical hero story, which has a heroine who starts at one of the lowest places possible and works hard to get the protagonist out of the situations she is thrown in without her consent. The pleasant aspect of the character development is that by seeing Chiyo start at the bottom with no discernible skills or abilities, the viewer wants to root for her, even if they are not thrilled about how she goes about doing it.

Memoirs Of A Geisha is very much a cultural piece and those in the United States might not always understand the cultural differences which make a hero out of a woman who sells her services and her body. The film works very hard to declare that Sayuri is not a prostitute, but this fact becomes confusing when geishas like her sell their virginity to the highest bidder. The geisha here is a high priced escort whose virtue is not for sale or use after the first time, apparently.

The film has a very strong middle as Sayuri works to become a master geisha, turning the heads of men she passes. In that section, Sayuri becomes immensely likable and the antics of Hatsumomo become quickly tiresome. The viewer wants to see Sayuri succeed, in no small part because of her unwillingness to be a competitor with one of the less-versed geishas, Pumpkin. Sayuri illustrates her kindness in an dog eat dog world and the character works. The movie runs into some problems, just as Sayuri does, in the latter portions of the film when she becomes active again during the reconstruction after World War II. In those parts of the movie, the relationship with the Chairman seems a lot more artificial than it ought to and even the performances between Ken Watanabe and Zhang Ziyi are a little more stiff. Ironically, it is at that moment that Youki Kudoh begins to be able to show her true range as an actress as she is able to play Pumpkin as drunk and very unreserved in wonderful contrast to her earlier performance.

The primary performers in the film are generally wonderful. Zhang Ziyi plays Chiyo/Sayuri with a wonderful human quality and strong façade alternately. She is able to be cool and collected one moment and in the next, she is crying and vulnerable and the ability to make such mood swings humanizes her character who might otherwise come across as cold and distant. Michelle Yeoh does a great job as Mameha. In fact, she is so good at altering her body language and expressions over the course of the film that one is more likely to be surprised to know she was played by the same actress throughout.

By contrast, Ken Watanbe’s task in the film is largely to keep his façade up the entire movie and he does that masterfully. Watanbe, who proves in Inception just how expressive he can be, is a master of the performance through the eyes. He says more with a glance and the flinch of a lip than most actors say with pages of dialogue and he makes the Chairman an appropriately authoritative character as a result.

On DVD, Memoirs Of A Geisha comes with a commentary track, a handful of deleted scenes and featurettes on the casting, adaptation of the book and cinematography. They are pretty much the standards for a drama such as this.

Ultimately, Memoirs Of A Geisha looks good, but one has to have a high tolerance for characters suffering to want to stick with it past the very painful beginning.

For other deep dramas, please check out my reviews of:
The Spitfire Grill
Strawberry And Chocolate
The Social Network

6.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my index page!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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