BY HARPER BARNES
Special to the Post-Dispatch
07/10/2003

Who would have thought a movie inspired by a ride at Disneyland could be so much fun? And isn't it a good thing that Walt Disney Pictures chose "Pirates of the Caribbean" to bring to the screen, not "It's a Small World"?

The only thing wrong with this exhilarating, surprisingly witty pirate flick is that there is too much of it. There are, in particular, too many repetitive battle scenes shot in murky close-ups, making it difficult to tell - or to care - who is doing what to whom. And the movie keeps going long after the time has come for director Gore Verbinski ("The Ring") to strike the sails and send everyone home.

Still, with its terrific overall cast, a rousing story that combines adventure, romance, farce and comic horror, and marvelously hammy turns by Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush as dueling pirate captains, "Pirates of the Caribbean" is a winner.

Depp, with all manner of weird colorful gewgaws hanging from the undergrowth of his long, tangled hair, has a kind of lurching, eye-rolling way of moving that veers sharply between stoned clumsiness and beatific grace. The character may well look familiar to viewers who watched the recent Rolling Stones special on HBO: Depp has cheerfully confessed in interviews that he based his appearance as Captain Jack Sparrow in part on the idiosyncrasies of Stones guitarist Keith Richards.

Rush, as the zombified mutineer who stole Sparrow's pirate ship and now leads a disgustingly motley crew, at times seems to be channeling Hannibal Lecter. Depp and Rush, separately and particularly in their scenes together, owe nothing to modern naturalistic acting and everything to 19th-century melodrama. Usually, when actors appear to be having this much fun, it's bad news for the audience, but these two guys are a delight to watch.

There is a plot, at times too much of one. The bad pirates kidnap a fair maiden (Keira Knightley of "Bend It Like Beckham"). The handsome blacksmith who loves her (Orlando Bloom) hooks up with more-or-less-good pirate Depp to rescue her. There is a bunch of amusing nonsense about cursed Aztec gold and the lost heir to a dead pirate as Depp and Bloom pursue Rush and his demon ship across the Caribbean.

The script, by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, is droll and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, without being condescending to the material. Director Verbinski is, on the whole, quite skillful in knitting together scenes that fall neatly between suspense and slapstick.

Much of the movie is reminiscent of the work of horrormeister Sam Raimi - an eyeball keeps popping out of its socket, as in the "Evil Dead" movies, and the zombie pirates look rather like their landlocked cousins in "Army of Darkness." But the influence of Raimi is so overt that it has to be considered more homage than rip-off, and Verbinski sustains an almost irresistible level of high silliness through most of the film.

Despite its drawbacks, "Pirates of the Caribbean" is one of the most entertaining movies of the summer. If it were half an hour shorter, it might be in the theaters until Thanksgiving.

"Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl"
*** (out of four)
Rating: PG-13 (for adventure and horror-film violence)
Running time: 2:23