Funny time for Pirates

The New Yorker: The Critics: The Current Cinema

Watching the Middle East conflict hasn't left much time for fun this last week.

However, Anthony Lane's review of the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie encourages me to give it a go:

At two and a half hours, “Dead Man’s Chest” is far too long, but thanks to Depp—and to Bill Nighy, properly mean beneath his suckers and blubber—it swerves away from the errors committed by the other big movies this summer. If it swallowed a hundred and thirty-five million dollars in its first weekend, that is because of what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t bother to philosophize; it has nothing to report on perturbations within the human or superhuman condition; nor does it labor the nostrum, beloved of every sage from Gandalf to Xavier in “X-Men,” that with power comes responsibility. Instead, Verbinski’s movie trumpets the joy of irresponsibility, and, as for power, it never gets invited to the party.

Yes, I wish Spielberg could find it in him to do a purely fun, silly movie again, such as the undervalued "Temple of Doom", or the even less appreciated "1941". (The latter is somewhat of a guilty pleasure, but Pauline Kael defended it.)