If I had to summarize my thoughts on Pirates of the Caribbean in one sentence, it would be this one: while it’s a movie with several flaws of varying degrees of severity, it’s also enormously entertaining and will have me paying to see it a second time. And if I didn’t have to summarize my thoughts on the film in one sentence, I would probably ramble on for a paragraph or two about its flaws and why it’s still enormously entertaining. And I don’t, so I will.

One of the things that bothered me but that will probably bother very few other people is that it seems as though the filmmakers could have done their homework a tad more thoroughly. There are silly, unnecessary historical inaccuracies - it’s not that it’s a movie that really wants to be a perfect period piece, but this is simple stuff to correct. I find it hard to believe that during the entire production process, nobody pointed out the fact that the Royal Navy during the nebulous time period portrayed did not have such a thing as a permanent rank of commodore - much less a ceremony of promotion when one was created. (Mister Fancypants should probably have been an admiral, although he was a little young to be either.) And was HMS Dauntless supposed to be the Dauntless, the one that actually existed around eighteen-mumblemumble? It’s difficult to say, since there wasn’t an HMS Interceptor (nor a black-sailed ship of the damned, but that’s not really an issue of anachronism).

But okay, back in the land of people who don’t read Patrick O’Brian - there were other problems with the film, some of them minor (and some of them less so). Some troublesome pacing, some painful dialogue, and a whole lot of pirates made awfully tame by the constraints of appearing in a PG-13 Disney flick. If all the pirates really behaved the way they do in the film, it’s hard to see why poor Captain Jack merited a hanging - after all, they plunder very rarely and never so much as swear. It’s not that I’m not satisfied without seeing entrails flying and blood spurting every which way, but it is a movie about pirates. However, keeping in mind that it’s a Disney movie, it’s not nearly as squeaky-clean as I’d feared. Their particular brand of heavy-handed morality is relegated to more of a backseat role than usual, which is a relief.

Orlando Bloom is good, although his lovably sheltered character smacks very much of Legolas recast as a blacksmith. But I like Legolas, and Bloom does his job quite well. He’s vastly overshadowed, however, by both Geoffrey Rush and especially Johnny Depp - either one of them is capable of upstaging just about everyone else in the film, and they frequently do. Depp in particular steals the show, and I have a feeling that very little of the script would have worked even as well as it did without him. Luckily, it didn’t have to. He’s perfect for the role and for the movie, with his eyeliner and his dreads and his swaggering (or staggering). If I see it again, it will probably be because his Captain Jack is entirely and deliciously entertaining, and I hope they keep that in mind for the sequel(s).

I’ve bitched fairly extensively about bits of the film, but I want to emphasize that I did like it, very much so. It’s this summer’s Spider-Man - it’s just as goofily light but fantastic. Plus, there’s a zombie monkey.