#HMS DAUNTLESS PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN MOVIE#

The writing duo ingeniously use their titular curse to explain why a comely lass's purity isn't endangered on a shipful of unsavory seamen and provide clever realities for Jack's legendary exploits. One of Barbossa's crew, Ragetti (Mackenzie Crook, BBCA's 'The Office'), has a wooden eye substituting for the more traditional peg leg.

Pirates rules are frequently cited only to be followed up by a chorus of 'but they're really only guidelines,' by those anxious to break them. Elliott and Rossio have great fun twisting some conventions on their heads. All the pirate elements are here - swinging from jibs, walking planks, talking parrots and ribald songs.

Director Gore Verbinski ('The Ring') neatly balances action, comedy and Disney's amusement park ride, coming up short only in curtailing a story that shovels on one too many layer. Elizabeth's gold medallion is the last piece and the blood of its owner is the last requirement to break the spell. Barbossa is determined to reverse the curse, which leaves them with hunger, thirst and lust unsated, by returning the cursed treasure of Cortez.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth learns of the curse when Barbossa and his crew turn into living skeletons in the moonlight. Barbossa sails in on the Black Pearl and makes off with the comely Elizabeth, so Will springs Jack from jail and the two commandeer a British naval vessel to save her (well, Jack really just wants his ship back). After Sparrow's bad fortune of saving the Governor's daughter, Will encounters the rapscallion hiding in his smithy and the two engage in a comedic, beautifully choreographed, sword fight (both Depp and Bloom have prior fencing experience from movies such as 'Don Juan DeMarco' and 'Lord of the Rings'). After the somewhat lengthy prologue which establishes the main characters of Port Royal, Captain Sparrow makes a dramatic and positively hilarious entrance, gliding into port on a ship that sinks just as he steps onto the dock. This amusing swashbuckler (written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio ('Treasure Planet,' 'Shrek')) owes a lot of its charm to star Johnny Depp, who has an uncanny ability to find positively strange character tics and make them work.

#HMS DAUNTLESS PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN MOVIE#

Sparrow's followed by Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush, 'The Banger Sisters'), his mutinous former first mate who's come to kidnap the Governor's daughter to break a curse in 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.' In its second attempt to 'Universalize' itself by spawning a movie franchise from one of its theme park rides, Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer get things mostly right.

Ripley') much to blacksmith Will's dismay, she's saved from drowning by Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), a pirate her father, Governor Weatherby Swann (Jonathan Pryce, 'What a Girl Wants'), has thrown in the brink. Years later, as Elizabeth is on the verge of accepting a proposal from Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport, 'The Talented Mr. As a young girl, Elizabeth Swann (Lucinda Dryzek, later Keira Knightley, 'Bend It Like Beckham') always loved the allure of pirates, but sailing from England to Port Royal, she witnesses the fiery aftermath of a pirate raid and snatches a gold skull and crossbones medallion from a young survivor, Will Turner (Dylan Smith, later Orlando Bloom, 'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers'), to shield his possible identity.

Hms dauntless pirates of the caribbean