The devil wears seafood

Many a lobster dinner was expensed as 'reference' for this film.

So did you see it? Given the BO(1), chances are good you did. And given the exit polling, (92% of a very diverse audience rating it as very good or better) you pretty much liked it.

Besides haughty self-righteous indignation, one of the things I felt staring at that 52% on RT last week was a warm fuzzy recollection of days of yore, when I could rely on critics to slam summer movies I had terrific fun at. They're hard to find now, but I do remember reading some pretty nasty reviews for 'junk' movies turned classics like Ghostbusters and Back to the Future back in the day.

For a while there it seemed like the critics kind of got it and were right there with us in seeing silly summer fun for what it was, such as when they loved the original back in '03. So this time they saw that it was silly, saw that it was fun, and yet they slammed it seemingly with relish. Go figure.

Anyway, if you had talked to me after the preview we got about two weeks ago, I would have dropped some good money on an RT rating somewhere in the high 70s/low 80s. I guess it's good I didn't, but I really would've out of some passive-aggressive spite even if I knew then what I know now. In fact, dare I say it, I actually liked this one much more than the original, and many folks at the screening were equally surprised to find that they agreed.

I was actually pretty luke-warm about the original, kind of for many of the reasons the critics are slamming it now. It kind of moved slow for me. The plot seemed a bit obfuscated and somewhat inconsistent. I didn't quite connect with the characters.

So lynch me, I think Keira looks kinda hot like this.

This time I did. The sequel built nicely off a familiarity with the old characters and put them in interesting new situations with what I found to be campy-but-fun banter in the finest tradition of certain space epics from our collective youth. I really enjoyed the new characters, from Harris's crazy witch doctor to the evil trading company guy to Nighy's Davy Jones(2). Especially Davy Jones, actually.

The plot, frankly, made a lot more sense to me than the original, where I never quite could resolve everything about the cursed gold, who was cursed, and who needed to do what to fix it. It actually cleared up some of the questions and inconsistencies raised by the original in a very satisfying way.

Pace-wise, I really didn't feel the 150 minutes. Seriously. I had a smile on my face the whole time and always found something on screen to keep me interested. It ends on a terrific note and I am primed for part trois, particularly what creative things they find to do with one Mr. Chow Yun-Fat.

Those hills look familliar...

FULL DISCLOSURE: Yes, it could be said I have connections to this film. Apparently several scenic photos from my Brasil visit last winter came in handy for a few BGs we slapped together. So take this all with that grain of salt, but most of you who know me will know that I'm brutally honest about our projects.

FULL DISCLOSURE 2/CONFESSION: Yes, I did see the movie which the title of this entry spoofs, and will probably lose hetero points for saying I really liked that one as well. To be fair, I was taking my Mom for her birthday... After seeing a company screening for it at which I figured it'd be something she'd like, which she did. So yes, I've seen that film twice and pirates deux once.

(1) Box Office. What do you think it stands for?

(2) I have to stress that his face is NOT prosthetic, but totally CG, right down to the eyes. We (in the collective sense) did the mix of mo-cap and animation that you might recall for certain characters from certain other epics involving bad jewelry.