the groundhog day project

I have only one thing further to say about Cutthroat Island . Except, it's not really about the movie itself; rather, it's about Roger Ebert's review . See, he doens't praise it, but he also doesn't seem to find it as boring and distasteful as I do. And, I am surprised by that. "'Cutthroat Island' does not disappoint," he writes. "It touches all [its] bases like clockwork..." Those bases, the tropes of any "decent pirate pictures" according to Roger: (1) an escape from a hostile port; (2) a battle at sea, preferably with broadsides fired and pirates boarding each other's ships; (3) one featured swordfight, (4) a storm at sea, with the survivors washed ashore, and (5) discovery of the treasure and a final confrontation. And, you know what I like about that list? At first blush, my personal favorite pirate movie-- The Pirate Movie --has but one of those, a featured swordfight. Now, at second blush, it's got a storm at...

Case in point: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales . I will keep this short--unlike the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, or any of its action sequences, that just kind of drone on well beyond reasonability. Seriously, each movie is basically the same--Jack, some varied background pirates (I think there are only 2 left from the original bunch), Barbossa, a young man and a young woman, quest for some magical MacGuffin, some supernaturally empowered villains tries to stop them, folks backstab and betray and turn on each other than back to each other, and, oh yeah, gotta throw in some British soldiers chasing after everyone, too. Make. Each action scene about twice as long as it needs to be, throw in some overwrought romance, some one-note characterizations and there's your Pirates of the Caribbean film in a nutshell. Overstuffed and overdone, and mostly just tedious. Maybe one genuinely funny moment. Jack offers Will--I mean, Henry--advice on courting a brunette. ...