Plot Holes in Stephen Spielberg's Hook, Explicated by the Original Novel by JM Barrie

Title: Hook
Copyright: Amblin Entertainment, Lucasfilm, Columbia/TriStar Pictures
Starring: Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Bob Hoskins, Julia Roberts, Maggie Smith
Running Time: 144 minutes
Score: 8.5/10
Buy?: Buy at Amazon for $8.49 or less. You can also view it on their On Demand channel, for rent, for $2.99.

Peter Pan is a staple of children's fantasy today. The Disney version created much of the common knowledge American audiences have about the canon -- a lot of which is inaccurate. But still, the original novel, published in 1911 (turning 100 years old this October), despite being an adaptation, itself, is one of the best written portrayals of childlike wonder in the world. It's simple, yet sophisticated, whimsical, yet surprisingly dark.

The original novel practically invented the notion of a parallel universe AND the entire "creepy kid" genre in fiction. Silent Hill, Rule of Rose, Interview with the Vampire, Lord of the Flies, and every. creepy. kid. book. or. movie. or. game. owes thanks to J.M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy for kickstarting the fad, and most people who love the original story don't even pick up on this.

To die would be an awfully big adventure.

Its views of childlike innocence are complex, spanning a range of themes from the importance of growing up, the dichotomy between children and adults, the morality of innocence (or lack thereof), and even the differing roles of women.

The story is world-renowned, though we in the US are generally more able to identify tropes from the Disney animated feature than any other version of the story. Don't believe me? Here are a few things most people think are part of the Peter Pan mythos that only exist in the Disney version:

1. "Second star to the right and straight on till morning."
2. Tinker Bell existing at any point after the main story is over.
3. Peter Pan featured as a teenager.
4. Wendy being "forced" by her parents to grow up.

Do all of these look familiar? That's because most media released based on Peter Pan anymore tends to refer more to the Disney version than the book. Bear these points in mind, because they come into play in my review.

The Movie: Today's movie, Hook, released in 1991, was built from a screenplay by J.V. Hart, who as far as writers in the fandom go, is the one author I've come across that knows his book canon and understands the spirit of the original novel, and a lot of this shows through in his handling of the characters.

Hook is a "what if" story, telling what would have occurred had Peter decided not to go back to Never Never Land. The answer is that he grew up and became exactly the sort of father and husband he always playacted in the book -- obsessed with work, unnecessarily hard on his children, and with no inner child whatsoever. He became the sort of person that children fear becoming when they do not wish to grow up. Now Peter Banning, he is a lawyer with his gargantuan cellular phone permanently attached to his ear.

He has two children with Moira, the granddaughter of his beloved Wendy, whom he now regards more as a benefactor like many other orphans she has rescued. Maggie is a sweet little girl, more exuberant than Wendy as a child, and still small enough to believe in the story of Peter Pan. She vies for her father's attention playfully and always seems to try not to take it personally when he rather bluntly contradicts her childish fancies, as though she simply expects fathers to do this. She asks him if Granny Wendy is the "really real" Wendy from the story, to which he sternly replies "no", and his wife tells him where he can shove it – and it plays off as though this is probably a regular occurrence in their household. Jack, her older brother, was recently disappointed (probably not for the first time) when Peter promised to come to a baseball game, only for him to get tied up in work, as usual, and miss it entirely. He's grown jaded by Peter's constant broken promises, and it's causing him to act out. Unfortunately, important business matters are keeping Peter on the phone even while on vacation, and he's so stressed that attempts made by both children to coax him into playing with them only end in random fits of rage.

No one is surprised at this point that Peter Pan didn't want to grow up. Kid at least knew he'd be a dick.

What's more important is that Peter is so busy being the worst father ever that he completely ignores Maggie's early warnings that since their arrival in London there's been a man coming to their window at night, claiming to be a window washer. This should be alarming enough as the bedroom window in question is three stories off the ground. Jack also complains of some of his possessions going missing. Perhaps he put these off as simple "monster under the bed" daydreaming and childish misplacement, but if I'm in a strange place and my kid claims that some creeper has been climbing up and looking into the window (much less taking things, which this one has), I'd look into it. I certainly wouldn't leave them alone to go to a party. Considering Jack even says that they have bars on their windows at home, it's not like Peter Banning is an idiot when it comes to safety anyway.

But this is what happens. Peter, Moira, and Wendy go to a gala being held in Wendy's honor, as her efforts have led to the successful adoption of many orphans whom she took in and fostered herself, including Peter, and this is the sort of thing that leads hospital boards to dedicate an entire new wing to you. The party goes over well, and meanwhile, back at home, Toodles (Wendy's first orphan, now elderly and regressed to a childlike state), senses the approach of something sinister, (back at the party Wendy likewise briefly senses a great disturbance in the Force,) and the children are stolen from their beds in the night.

Peter, Moira, and Wendy return home to find that someone has broken into the house. The maid, Liza, is in hysterics, and the nursery is empty, but for a letter left on the door, addressed to Peter, requesting his presence on behalf of his children, signed "Jas. Hook, Captain".

The police are baffled and assume it’s some sort of prank, given the unique history of the house and its inhabitants – which are apparently chalked up to nothing more than urban legend surrounding the famous children’s book. Wendy has a different view, and in the privacy of her bedroom she confesses to Peter that he is Peter Pan from the book and play, and that his children have been taken by Captain Hook as revenge. It’s a notion that he, being understandably frightened, tries to put off as a sign that Granny Wendy might be going a little senile.

He should have realized something was wrong when she claimed she could turn into a cat.

Hoping perhaps to numb the pain of both losing his children in a foreign country and the medical costs he’s likely going to incur paying for a nurse for both Tootles and now Wendy, Peter adjourns to the nursery to sulk and get hammered. Given his present location and the intention behind his drinking, he should not have been surprised to see a fairy played by Julia Roberts fly into his window. We’ve all been there. In fact, after in the initial shock, he comes to his senses and reaches the same conclusion this writer would have: that he’s been drinking and it’s been a long, traumatic night, so he must be hallucinating. This satisfies him until the fairy, claiming to be Tinkerbell, kicks his ass and kidnaps him. The police will probably assume this was a prank, too, even when he shows them the pictures of Barbie-sized fist marks and footprints left on his face and the CAT scans showing his concussion.

He awakens in Neverland where the pirates, having been docked for so long with literally nothing to do, have built an entire village around the long-anchored Jolly Roger. There is now an entire colony of adults – both men and women – going about their lives in a very old-timey Pirates of the Caribbean-style. The ride, though. Not the movie. So there was less racism, ninja women, and Orlando Bloom (for which we are all grateful) – and more drinking and singing songs.

Only downside: Less Geoffrey Rush.

Here we discover that Hook has killed and stuffed the crocodile that stalked him for the entirety of the original novel, and that he has kidnapped Peter Pan’s children to lure him back there for a final battle. After killing a crewmember (presumably…probably) for betting that he wouldn’t find the children, he brings Jack and Maggie out to show them off, and discovers then that Peter Pan has already arrived. After much discussion and learning that Peter is a complete and utter douchenozzle, Hook concedes bitterly that his worthy opponent has forgotten everything about him – which honestly shouldn’t surprise him, but I’ll get to that later. He gives Peter one last chance to save his children and prove he’s the Peter he’s looking for, if he’ll fly up to his children (suspended in a net), and touch their hands. Naturally, Peter Banning can’t fly, and instead he climbs the mast and attempts to reach them before gravity reaches him. He freezes up in the riggings and can’t even throw himself onto the net with them. Hook is displeased to learn that not only has Peter forgotten him, but he is completely unmatched to him in every way. He’s out of shape, useless, and too craven for even his desperation to overpower his shortcomings. The disillusioned Captain is prepared to kill both him and his children and be done with it, when Tinkerbell intervenes and convinces him that she can whip Peter into shape in three days. Hook, being the King of unrealistic expectations, agrees to let her try and keeps the children.

The rest of the film features Peter rediscovering his childhood with the Lost Boys, overcoming his fears and proving that he is, in fact, Peter Pan – a notion angrily denied by the Lost Boys’ new leader, Rufio, who 20 years after the release of this movie is about as badass as an MC Hammer video – which is still more badass than Peter Banning. He has to learn to use his imagination and to defend himself, on top of just remembering that he used to do all this stuff without even thinking about it. It takes seeing Hook treat Jack like his own son to give him the determination, at least, to be willing to endure physical pain in order to save his children. Seeing him throw himself repeatedly from increasing heights in the hopes that each time he’ll fly (when he still doesn’t believe that he can) looks silly, but remember that back on Hook’s ship he wouldn’t even do that much, and Jack and Maggie were right there. Finally, he’s stricken with an epiphany, literally, and his memories, along with most of his Peter Pan powers, return to him. Once they come back fully, he very nearly forgets his wife and children, but Tinkerbell, of all persons, is the one who convinces him not to be selfish and keeps him on the straight and narrow.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the island (after a botched suicide attempt), Hook decides he doesn’t just wish to fight Pan, but break his spirit, and begins attempting in earnest to brainwash the children. It doesn’t take with Maggie because she has fewer fears and angers to prey upon, but Jack, who was especially hurt by what seemed like Peter’s utter unwillingness to help him (on top of previous disappointments), is perfectly ready to place the blame and over the course of the next few days slowly begins to forget his family, even Maggie once the two are separated. Despite saying some utterly cruel things to Maggie within earshot of him, Jack responds immediately to Hook’s willingness to be friends with him because it’s the most positive attention he’s ever gotten from an adult male in his life. When the final battle comes days later, Peter will have to not only wrestle with his old demons, but also with the fact that his son only remembers Hook as his father now, and is completely happy with this.

Peter is honestly lucky. Imagine the psychological damage there would have been if the worst intentions Hook had for Jack didn’t just involve making him wear matching femmy getup.

Swords are drawn, pirates are battled, and justice is served – as you just about expect. Hooray.

6 Plot Holes or Questions:

Here’s where I’m taking a different turn on the usual format of my reviews. Typically, this is where I go into detail on the bad points in the movie. Other reviewers have done this admirably, so I feel no need to repeat what they’ve said here. I will however, talk about questions and proposed plot holes that I’ve found on the internet, because the original J.M. Barrie novel actually addresses (if not answers) a lot of them.

1. During the Final Battle, Maggie is being kept locked up with a group of random children we never see nor hear from again. Who were they? Did Hook capture any Lost Boys?

This is the only one that is not answered by the book. It just surprises me that no one ever talks about this, so I’m bringing it up here. No, these are not Lost Boys. Dialogue throughout the movie suggests that when Hook set out to find and capture Peter’s children, he honestly had no idea what the Hell he was doing. It’s kind of lucky on his part that he actually managed to do it at all, because he’d literally been stealing children from London for God knows how long – the police even mention multiple disappearances. Hook was only fortunate enough to finally come to the right window at a time when Peter and family just happened to be visiting London. It boggles the mind that he has the nerve to be surprised that because of his methods, some of his crewmembers – particularly those played by Glenn Close – were taking bets that he would eventually just give up and stop trying. …Because a sane person would have, and he’s regrettably the smartest adult on the island. Those children are the other children he kidnapped. You never see them again, which probably means that nobody ever took them home, and they’re still in Never Never Land not-remembering the parents back at home who are probably crying themselves to sleep every night.

2. Why does Maggie's singing entrance the pirates?

Because Neverland is a dick.

…No, not entirely. (This will be a common theme throughout this Q & A, though.) Something that is often debated among the characters in the original novel is the subject of mothers. Peter thinks mothers suck, because he has abandonment issues, and he forbids the very subject of them until he brings Wendy to Neverland, who is only cool because she’s also a child and therefore acceptable. ‘Mother’ seems to be the only acceptable role for girls in Neverland because Peters whims define reality (more on this in question 6), and he doesn’t really understand “sister” or “romantic interest” or “wife” as terms. It frustrates every poor stupid girl that develops a crush on him (and why they do when he’s still physically and mentally young enough to still have all his baby teeth is beyond me). The Pirates, especially Captain Hook, are quite reverent of mothers – Hook, himself was raised by his doting aunt, who believed he could do no wrong (and reportedly thought this “Pan” boy sounded like a trouble-maker). Mothers represent a calm and gentle authority, who have answers for everything, and who nurture and protect (in their own way), when the Neverland itself is not interested in doing any of those things (because it’s a dick). The pirates and the Lost Boys both seem interested in Wendy as a mother figure because she tells stories, and that is an act they associate with good mothers that both comforts and soothes them. Likewise, one can infer that singing lullabies probably fills a similar niche. So when Maggie is off by herself singing a song her mother sang to her, even though she’s really only doing it to comfort herself because she’s in a scary place and trying very hard not to forget home, it comforts everyone listening to it, too. Even Hook is affected by this.

3. Why does Peter age when he goes to Neverland for the first time, as a child? Why are half the Lost Boys teenagers?

Remember me saying that the whole “Wendy being forced to grow up” thing wasn’t in the book? It wasn’t. Not only was it not in the book, but ‘you’ll never grow up’ was not even really a selling point in getting Wendy and her brothers to come visit.

Why?

Because children do age in Neverland, except for Peter, unless he uses his control over reality to basically tailor them back down to an acceptable size. The book even not-so-subtly infers that when Lost Boys grow too much, Peter kills them. (He also ran the risk of killing them if he wanted to play “Pirates versus the Incredible Me!” and there were no pirates around. Peter Pan is a dick.) Yes, he has a way of making sure that doesn’t happen, but he also has the memory of a brain-damaged goldfish, and his priorities are kind of mixed up.

A better question to ask about the Lost Boys in Hook is why they aren’t fully grown. It’s very likely that they just learned to do the tailoring down, themselves, because Rufio is just as happy to kill adults as Peter was and a lot less “special” about it. Rufio is dangerous in a completely different way from Peter because he’s nearly an adult, himself, knows the difference between right and wrong and just plain doesn’t care so long as he gets to be in charge and continue playing Neverland like it’s a giant turf war.

So Peter stopped aging because he chose to stop aging and may have even gone backwards a little. The Lost Boys probably figured out how to do the same thing once he was gone.

4. Why does Peter, as a baby, know what death is?

I’m not going to say this is answered by the book, but it brings up points that probably compliment it. When Hook finds the Lost Boys’ hideaway and goes in to try and kill Peter while he sleeps, there’s a brief moment while watching him that he hesitates because he’s not such a little shit when he’s unconscious Peter is in the throes of full-on night terrors. The book even suggests that this happens to Peter literally every time he falls asleep. He is always happy when he is awake because he forgets absolutely anything that could make him unhappy. This includes familiar people dying, or killing people – which the book openly admits that he does pretty much on a regular basis – like, comes home covered in blood, there’s a body outside, and he can’t remember what he was doing before. This is a thing that happens. It is supposed that all these unremembered things come back when he sleeps, that he's dreaming about the dark origins of his being, etc.

Cheery, isn't it?

It’s very possible that Peter in the movie is just misremembering when it was that he understood what death was (because he doesn’t ever seem to fully grasp just what it is in the book, or care), or he just hadn’t forgotten enough of his adult self that he was able to let it in, and was using it as a good reason why it would suck to grow up.

Also, somebody should really call CPS on this lady. Who the Hell lets their kid blow away?

Another theory is that there may have been something psychologically off with this child to begin with.

Another one still is tied in with the previous question. Peter and Neverland seem to coexist, and it may be that the first time he did or witnessed horrible, traumatizing, and very grown up things, it made him forget (and continues to) so that he can go on being happy. And it just does the same thing to everyone else in differing degrees. (See Question 6 for more on this.)

5. Why doesn't Jack recognize Peter when he comes to rescue him?

Shortest and easiest answer ever! Because Neverland is a dick.

This time I’m actually quite serious. Not only is Jack in a place that just doesn’t like it when children experience separation anxiety from their parents, but he’s also the son of Peter Pan, the boy-King of dealing with your issues by forgetting they exist. His father made him sad, so it was very easy for Hook to slip in and completely reshape his view of the world. You’ll notice that during the baseball scene that it’s very likely he was beginning to forget his mother and Maggie, too, and it was only referencing (albeit accidentally) something that Maggie said that got through to him.

Because Neverland is a dick.

6. Why is Hook suicidal? Why isn't Smee nice and dapper like he is in the book/EVERY VERSION OF PETER PAN EVER?/Why is Neverland a dick?

Longest answer: The first two questions are shoved in together because I’m pretty sure they’re both for the same reason: Neverland drives grownups crazy.

The book describes two different Neverlands – the one that exists in the mind of every child (and adult – though they’re too old to “land there” any longer), and the one that Peter Pan calls home, which is pretty much a living dimension that shapes itself around his completely random and pointless whims. If he wants it to snow, it snows. The sun goes down when he decides it’s bedtime – and everything goes completely dark and sucks whenever ADD hits him and he leaves the island. There are no directions to Neverland that aren’t just made up. (In the book, he says his address is “Second to the right and straight on till morning”, and he only makes it up on the spot because he wants Wendy to be impressed.) You don’t find Neverland. Neverland takes you when it decides it wants to take you, and if you leave it’ll let you back in if and when it feels like it. Neverland is a dick. However, because reality there is completely dependent upon a child’s view of it, and that particular child thought that all grownups should die, it’s not a very kind reality for people who’ve passed the age of, like, thirteen. If you watch Nick Jr, though, it’s paradise!

Because, y’know, dimensions where reality shapes itself around the psychological issues of a single person at the center are never crappy places to live.

I’m not going to stop referencing this until someone agrees with me, damnit.

Neverland makes older people regress mentally, and Hook, in particular, seems to shift violently between being a cartoony, child-like vision of what a villain is supposed to be, and a grown man who appears to be painfully aware of what this place is doing to him. He is also the only adult who picks up on this, and laments that no one there understands him, least of all his men.

This relationship he has with the crew is kind of where Smee steps in. If you watch the movie, you can see that Hook has pretty much completely segregated himself from the rest of the crew – probably because when he does spend any amount of time with them, someone is getting shoved in boxes or shot. He really doesn’t care for them and doesn’t believe for a second that they give a damn about him. They were stupid to begin with and Neverland has just made them even more stupid and childish in the process. They’re actually a little better in Hook than they are in the book, but then without Peter there, everything, including the Lost Boys, seems to be a little more grown up. Smee, in the movie, serves as the smooth-talking press secretary for the Captain and the rest of the crew. He understands Hook’s higher diction and is able to translate it to the others and keep them interested. It’s not that he’s necessarily become more crude because Neverland has degenerated him; it was likely just the film’s interpretation of a part of his character in the novel. Hook secretly dislikes Smee because he has “perfect form” – meaning he’s just awesome without even trying to be. The children actually like Smee and want to hang around him and let him play with them; this pisses off the Hook because “no little children love him.” He even considers killing Smee over it, but Smee is also pretty much the only crew member that goes out of his way to look after him. He is much cleaner and nicer in the book – the sort of pirate that would stab you in the stomach and rather than clean his sword might polish his glasses in a worried manner mumbling “Oh dear me, what a mess.” The effortless awesome probably just translated into him being more of a charismatic go-between/everyone’s good chum, but the nicer and cleaner aspects of him are gone. There is one thing that definitely did change – and that’s that he spends the entire movie leeching off of Hook when he thinks he’s either not looking or too depressed to care, and this is something that years ago he never would have done.

Hook is suicidal in the film. But for the theatricality he throws into the last battle, he has every intention of either killing Peter or dying, himself. In the book, he does die, when after spending so much time angry that Peter has good form for no reason (just like Smee), he finally gets Peter to be the dick he knows he is and kick him while he’s down. Peter just…happens to kick him right into the crocodile’s mouth. But because of this he dies happy. It’s finished, he doesn’t have to worry about being there anymore because he’s dead, and everybody gets what they want. Obviously, in the what if scenario that Hook presents, he survived (which makes perfect sense – he had a vial of deadly poison on his person when the crocodile swallowed him). However, he survived, and since Peter decided to leave Neverland, he has literally nothing to do, and his one reason for staying on the Island is gone. Not only has Pan up and left him, but he had the audacity to forget about him before he finished the job, so Hook gets to stay in Neverland and stew while Peter gets to have a life. If he was going to leave, he should have killed him, plain and simple, and he’s spent at least 30 years mulling over this, and if you spent 30 years being completely useless, unchallenged, and unhappy you would want to kill yourself, too.

Smee, meanwhile, is the only person that lifts a finger to stop Hook whenever he tries to end it all. He says “Oh not again” when Hook attempts it in the film – which means he’s done this before, enough times that it’s gotten annoying, and Hook seems genuinely interested to see if Smee will actually stop him because he wants him to live or because it’s expected of him. It becomes very clear that it’s only the latter, but sadly, if this war thing with Peter doesn’t work out the way he wants it to, then Smee is still the closest thing to a friend he has – a friend who steals his expensive belongings when the chips are down and who steals food out of his very mouth when he thinks he’s too sad to complain. Seriously, watch Smee “serve up a plate” of food for him and sneak bites of everything on there. Both of these characters are getting something out of the other in a parasitic sort of way, and in any normal setting this would be viewed as an unhealthy relationship. Here, it just shows how crazy Neverland has made them both.

IN CONCLUSION: Other reviews will tell you that Hook is a flawed, if enjoyable movie, and they’re right. J.V. Hart is also one of very few people that adapted from the original source that seemed to genuinely know what he was talking about. Clearly, some things were changed to make the ratings more appropriate (like the slapstick final battle, when in the book the kids were completely fine with killing pirates and vice versa). Some things were even changed to hearken more closely to the Disney version, like Tinkerbell still being alive (she is dead and Peter has completely forgotten her and replaced her by the end of the book). But looking at the original material makes this movie a much more interesting experience – partly because Hart had to hide some of the darker things. Some of them are even placed in plain sight but not really noticed for what they are. To experience the movie fully, you need to have read the book. It’s practically subtly trying to get you to do that if you haven’t already.

So give the book a read – you can find it in full text pretty much everywhere online because the novel is public domain (the play, however, is not). Then watch the movie again. See what you notice, and have fun.

3 Plot Holes in Famous Movies that the DVD Fairy Needs Hollywood to Answer

Preferably with something other than "We were lazy". I'm willing to wait. The following three films have nothing in common, save that there are small parts in them that follow threads of logic so astoundingly stupid that it impresses me that the stories were permitted to carry on afterward. They were things I never noticed as a kid, but now as an adult with way too much free time on her hands, these are the three things that will stop me in the middle of a movie, causing me to miss several minutes of dialogue because I'm still asking about what was really going on.

Plenty of other films and TV shows were runners up for this list -- but honestly did not produce enough material to take up a third or even a fourth of an article.

...Honorable mention goes especially to the 80s sitcom, Full House, because the DVD Fairy wants to know why the Hell there was never an earthquake in that show, despite taking place in San Francisco.

And why the Hell isn't Bob Saget funny?

So without further ado, here are three plot holes in famous movies that you may or may not have given second thought to.


NUMBER THREE - STAR WARS (ANY OF THEM) AND ITS STUPID SPACE BLOCKADES

In every Star Wars movie ever, there is a scene where our group of intrepid heroes -- whoever they happen to be at the time -- must leave a planet via spaceship. Inevitably, they must sneak past a blockade of Imperial Star Destroyers, the Trade Federation, the Death Star, or the Westboro Baptist Church.

What's pictured WILL follow you into an asteroid field, Han Solo

They're these huge blockades, tens if not hundreds of these enormous ships that are large enough to be their own ecosystems. All lined up and ready to take out any rebels or fugitives or bad child actors that try to pass them.

So What's the Problem? These blockades do not surround the entire planet. They never do. They don't even make a full ring around the planet, much less cover the whole sky. So why -- WHY, I ask you -- do the heroes never just...oh, I don't know: Fly to the other side of the planet? Or to the North or South pole? And just leave from there -- y'know, where there are obviously no enemy ships parked?

Is it more fuel efficient? Your ship can take you from one end of the galaxy and back without needing a refuel -- literally millions, if not billions of miles of fuel, but you can't be bothered to spare another few ten to a hundred thousand miles. This is a meager enemy force, taking up perhaps one percent of the entire planet's sky, and apparently to get anywhere else in space you just have to pass through them. Clearly this makes so much sense that it just seems stupid.

Outer space. There's a lot of it.

This is the sci-fi movie equivalent of refusing to take a back road when a ten car pileup has caused a traffic jam on the main highway. On a day when conditions were perfect, it'd take you five minutes longer to take this other route, that's five minutes you don't feel like sparing, so YOU'RE GOING TO WADE IN, DAMN THE CONSEQUENCES. It's just a million times more stupid because instead of having one back road that will get you where you're going, there are literally thousands of other routes.

To be fair, this isn't the fault of just Star Wars. There are few sci fi films that do not make this mistake. But you've been called on it now, Hollywood, so try something else.


NUMBER TWO - SLEEPING BEAUTY AND THE CHILD THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE SURVIVED

Disney's 1959 animated film is one of my favorite Disneys of all time. Several of its plot points were holdovers from the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs -- mainly plot points involving Prince Phillip, because men were too difficult to draw without rotoscoping back in the 30s. Animation was too new, and animators were too undertrained. It's also one of the only animated feature films by Disney that contains absolutely no original music. The score and the musical numbers were adapted from Tchaikovsky's ballet of the same name. It was the first animated movie to be shot in Technirama widescreen, and a million other random factoids taken straight from its Wikipedia page. It also features one of the company's most enduring and menacing villains ever brought to screen (and she didn't even need her own song).

Suck it, Scar.

It's also one of the few Disney Princess movies where the Princess actually spends less time on the screen than the side characters do.

A large part of the plot surrounds three good fairies (Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather) and their promise to raise the Princess Aurora to adulthood away from her parents. This comes after the villain of the film, Maleficent, prophesies that she will prick her finger and die on her sixteenth birthday, and steps are taken to prevent this from coming to pass. They believe that if they keep her hidden and raise her as a peasant, away from the prying eyes of the evil fairy, that she will not be able to anticipate Aurora's return to her parents and will not be able to carry out her plan. The way they intend to keep her hidden is to disguise themselves as humans, remove their wings, and hide their wands away, to live as mortals. They swear an oath to not use magic until after the sixteen years have passed. If Maleficent cannot find them, then she cannot find the baby she's looking for.

So it's a good plan, right? Anyway, they make her a dress and a cake on her sixteenth birthday (after caving and using magic on the last day), and return her to the castle in secret, only for Aurora to wind up falling under Maleficent's spell right before sunset anyway.

So What's the Problem? Now, I'm not going to do the obvious question that everyone asks, which is "Why didn't they just take Aurora back to her parents AFTER she turned sixteen?" That's too easy.

No, the glaring hole in the plot that I see, every time I watch this movie, is that somehow, these three fairies have survived at all for sixteen years, starting with a newborn baby. They've made their own clothes. They've fed themselves and the child. They've kept the place relatively clean. And yet, on the day they are meant to take the Princess back to her family, they show they do not know how to cook, sew, or clean the house. Eventually they mess up their projects so badly that they have to just cave, go dig out their wands, and magic everything to how they want it to be.

How the Hell are these crazy old bats still alive? And how did they raise a child to adulthood?

Pictured: The most useless old biddies in the universe.

The easy answer would be that they've been cheating from the beginning, but there is too much evidence given in the film, itself, to suggest the exact opposite. The minute they get their wands out, Maleficent finds them. If they had used them at any other time, we would have been spared the whole scene before this showing the villain ranting about how incredible it is that they've managed to hide for sixteen years. (Leave alone how they managed to get thread and make clothing AT ALL considering all the spinning wheels in the Kingdom were destroyed.) But you go right on, little movie. Go. Dazzle the hearts of children that know nothing of textiles and how they're made.


NUMBER ONE - WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (AND THE UNDISCOVERED CHOCOLATE ROOM TRAP)

This is the movie that taught children a valuable lesson -- namely that some adults are much smarter than other adults, and if you're a rotten little brat, then those same intelligent adults are going to punish you for everything your parents ever let you get away with. They might also give you candy. If you're lucky. (Or unlucky.)

Whichever one of you kids behaves the most gets the antidote! C:

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is considered by and large to be a cult classic, a standard held that filmmakers like Tim Burton covet most greedily. It didn't do well in theatres but it's hard to find a single person in the TV-watching world that hasn't seen it. As often as it's noted for its music, it's wonderful scenery (from the bleak and brown-spattered streets of Somewhereburg, Germany to the colorful, playful interiors of Willy Wonka's factory), and the sheer likeability of the title character and the film's hero, Charlie Bucket, this movie is also often remembered for sporting some of the creepiest moments in cinema history. In spite of special effects that are laughable by today's standards, the moments of wonder and terror in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory are impossible to replicate.

The thing with Willy Wonka in this movie is that he's subtly dangerous. Outside he is perfectly amiable. He is polite, charismatic, and brimming with intelligence. When he takes offense he playfully brushes it off with a retort often too sophisticated for his opponants to really detect. It's obvious he's a man of wonders, and in his search for an heir, it's clear why he won't choose another adult. It's not about smarts -- it's about cleverness, and it seems to be a trait he quite accurately thinks other adults simply grow out of. And so he seeks a successor among the child golden ticket holders -- testing them with temptations in each part of his factory, laying out traps to play on their much-televised weaknesses -- all save for Charlie Bucket, who has not had the time for the paparazzi to set stars in his eyes and get him too jaded to win the day at the end. Rather than have the dialogue cheaply point out that each trap was an obvious setup ("Did that seem rehearsed at all?" asks a child after the first contestant has been sung to his doom by the Oompa Loompas. "No, they were improvising!" beams Johnny Depp as Michael Jackson Wonka), the only indication that you get within the original movie that Wonka intended to lose the dead weight is that each time they move to a new section of the factory floor, there is only enough room for the people that are left. The boat that takes the contestants from the Chocolate Room to what Rifftrax dubbed a "wide awake nightmare" does not have enough seats for Augustus Gloop and his mother, so it's probably a good thing he fell in the river, right? It's a shame they lost Violet and Veruca when they board the Wonka Mobile, but all the same, there was only space enough for five people anyway. It chills you the first time you realize it.

Not Pictured: Subtlety.

So What's the Problem? We never got to see one of the traps.

Willy Wonka has a pretty standard reaction to children misbehaving in his factory. He told them at the door not to touch anything unless he said otherwise. He made them sign a contract promising they had heard him say this and would obey him. An entire scene was devoted to this. And yet, every time a child backtalks him, steals something right out of his hand, or ignores his last warning, his voice drops to a monotone, nonchalant drawl. While chaos breaks out all around him, you can barely hear him uttering "wait stop come back here". And when the inevitable finally happens, he is patiently waiting for the horror to end, allowing the rest of his guests to scream, sob, and salivate while he maintains a bored, exasperated composure. He is not wasting any more energy than he has to on these disobedient little twerps. They signed a pain waiver. Everything that happens after they break the rules, he is completely covered for. He is the picture of calm, the adult that is not mad, just disappointed --

All save in one instance: When Augustus Gloop decided to forego chowing down on the meadow of sweets that was the Chocolate Room and, ignoring Wonka's rather earnest demands that he keep his fat fingers out of his chocolate river, fell ass over teakettle into the vat. And thus America and audiences round the world were introduced to their very first Gene Wilder Freakout:

GIVE ME MY BLUE BLANKET MY GRANDFATHER'S RESEARCH WAS DOODOO STELLAAAAAAAAAA

This is not the face of a man with a plan. Ignore the original novel and just look at the performance. This was clearly not the trap Willy Wonka had set. When Charlie Bucket stole Fizzy Lifting Drink, Wonka reamed him over the costs incurred just because he touched the walls, which now had to be cleaned. Now imagine the cost of emptying a supply of melted chocolate that flows through the entire factory because it's been contaminated with fat deaf German kid (and you KNOW that kid was scared enough to void his bowels at some point), then the cost to clean all the channels, then the cost to refill the whole system with melted chocolate again. Think about the sheer amount of resources. This kid, in refusing to just eat the giant gummy bears like everyone else, has just jacked up the cost of your most affordable chocolate (made entirely of sawdust) to thirty dollars an ounce.

Willy Wonka can not have intended for that to happen.

So this leaves the question: What other death trap is there in the Chocolate Room, undiscovered? What confectionary masterpiece in that candy paradise did Wonka think was so much more tantalizing to a diabetic chocoholic than a river made of chocolate? And what is going to happen when he transfers some poor Oompa Loompa from another division of the factory into the Chocolate Room and the poor thing just haplessly comes upon it someday? Where in the room is it?

Oh. There it is!

Awesomely Bad Movie Review - Masters of the Universe: The Motion Picture

Title: Masters of the Universe: The Motion Picture
Copyright: 1987 by Cannon Films
Starring: Dolph Lundgren, Frank Langella, Meg Foster, Courtney Cox
Running Time: 106 min.
Score: 6/10
Buy?: Buy at Amazon for $10.49 or less. You can also view it on their On Demand channel, for rent, for $2.99. I highly recommend just renting and streaming if you just want to take a peek at it. Three bucks is more than fair.

Even most fans of the Masters of the Universe cartoon, toys, and comics are skeptical, at best, about the film adaptation of the series. The original cartoon was produced innocently enough, but due to modern pop culture trends and a lot of out-of-context animation reels that -- let's face it -- look pretty suggestive to audiences today, most who weren't fans of the show think that He-man and all things related are just one big gay joke. Because everybody has heard all of those jokes, and thanks to online critics like the Nostalgia Critic, even the live action movie, which I'll be reviewing here, has been included in the joke. Which is fine. But for that reason, this review is not going to linger on the gay jokes and just focus on the film at hand -- a film that, for all its flaws, is one that I was raised watching and therefore love.

Base Reaction: Okay, people. You've seen my score, but don't mistake this for a good movie. With the exception of films like Aliens and Willow -- which were well written and critically and financially successful, and maybe one or two other films that stand outside those standards and just managed to luck out, the standard for Sci-Fi/Fantasy movies, especially those that were made in the 80s, was for them to be gimmicky and awesomely bad, if awesome at all. I won't say there is no such thing as a good sci-fi/fantasy movie from the 80s, because as I said, there are exceptions.

However, I promise you that none of those exceptions came from a pure and unadulterated desire to capitolize on a toy line and the masses of screaming boys (and some girls) who demanded them.

That being said, I do enjoy this movie in spite of its faults. A movie can be a bad movie and still be fun to watch. Look at how many fans there are of Napoleon Dynamite. Now, I think that movie's boring, but they seem to be enjoying themselves.

Let alone that most fans I've met strongly resemble the main character, and therefore it's difficult to register an expression.

Our film today is, like the cartoons and comics, set in the world of Eternia, where the forces of good and evil, mostly in the form of sweaty muscle men in loin cloths and speedos, did battle over entry to the mythical Castle Greyskull, guarded by the now-wingless Sorceress. Contained inside is apparently untold power, granting the holder god-like abilities and mastery over the universe -- hence the title of the series. The whole point of the series was that Prince Adam was given a sword by the Sorceress that allows him to transform into He-Man (played in the film by Dolph Lundgren), the strongest man in the Universe, and with those powers he could protect Castle Greyskull from the evil forces out to conquer it -- namely Skeletor (played here by Frank Langella).

Well, the movie starts after those efforts by He-man have completely failed. Skeletor, backed by an army of Darth Vaders, has taken Castle Greyskull and imprisoned the sorceress. He achieved this through use of one of two Cosmic Keys -- musical devices that open dimensional doorways and make teleporting possible. These keys were created by master inventor Gwildor (Billy Barty), not featured in the series and invented both to replace the wizard Orko (CG was not yet advanced enough to make him look realistic anyway) and to give the toy company an excuse to cast another figurine. He-man, now leading the resistence in a war-ravaged Eternia, rescues Gwildor, and he and his allies are shown Gwildor's second key -- which Skeletor does not know exists. They use it to enter Castle Greyskull but fail to rescue the Sorceress, forced instead to open a door to an unknown world and jump through to evade capture.

And where do they end up? Earth. In the 1980s. God help them.

There are a few side plots that come out of this -- of course the typical fish-out-of-water plot with the Eternians, but then you meet Julie and Kevin, teenaged lovers who are about to be permanently separated. Julie's parents died recently in a plane crash, and she's moving away. There's also an angry never-listens-to-anybody cop who keeps making things more difficult for everybody once Skeletor starts sending his minions in search of the key. (And this guy, James Tolkan, never plays any other kind of character -- not cops, necessarily, but angry adults who serve as nothing but a buzzkill to teenaged protagonists. You'll remember him from Back to the Future as Principal Strickland.)

So it's one of those race against time plots, because the key that He-man had (it was lost upon re-entry) has been damaged, and the heroes must return to Eternia before some series-lexicon-identified event occurs, in which Skeletor will have all the powers of Grayskull bestowed upon him. Skeletor wants the other key destroyed because so long as one exists there's always the possibility of He-man returning. And rather than send people to kill He-man while the lady that gave him his powers in the first place is slowly being drained of her essence, he wants him captured because of some lame Evil Overlord List violation regarding not wanting He-Man to be a martyr. But the two teenage kids find the key (Kevin mistakes it for a synthesizer), and the heroes have to find them, but the bad guys are chasing them, and people get separated -- and it leads to about 20 minutes of "who has the damn thing now?" After that 20 minutes the storylines finally come together and we have some deus ex machina and a final battle to get to. Yippee!

Here's Where it Fails: In multiple places -- but I promise you I've actually got more things to praise about it than to criticize.

To get to the smaller points, the production values aren't the best (maybe okay for the time, but don't expect to be blown away by the special effects -- sometimes they don't even fully synch up with what's happening on screen). The dialogue is dreadful in places (but spectacular in others -- I'll get to that in my Gush), and Dolph Lundgren is nigh impossible to understand because his accent is so thick. They overplay Gwildor's exposure to earth-culture and spend WAY too much time at the chicken place (these points are all better addressed in the Nostalgia Critic's review, so I won't touch them here).

More importantly, what turns a lot of original fans off to the movie is that it's viewed as too different from the original cartoon series. I'll address a number of these points here:
-He-man is shown as having superhuman strength perhaps once, and is more often seen fighting with a gun than a sword.
-There's no Orko, but I'm kind of glad they left him out because I could have done without the muppet on strings.
-You never see Prince Adam, and the "transformation" sequences in both the He-man and She-ra cartoons were considered highlights of the series, to children.
-The story doesn't take place in Eternia -- a landscape that fans would have liked to see in greater detail. To be fair about the latter, though, this probably saved a buttload on production values, and for a film that budgetted an estimated $17 million, that was probably a good thing.
-I don't hear this often from fans of the series, but wonder about it myself -- Teela has implied romantic feelings for He-man in the series, or at least I'm almost certain she does, and this never gets addressed or even hinted at onscreen. (Most fans complain that Teela's not a redhead, and I think that's inconsequential.) Seeing some character development for the main heroes, and not the villains (you get an interesting moment between Skeletor and Evil-Lyn in the middle of the movie) nor two earthlings who are carried through the entire movie by means of inertia, would have really grounded the film a bit more.
-I think it's a bit of a plot hole that He-man can muster the strength to fight Skeletor at the end of the film, while Skeletor has absorbed the powers of Greyskull, if the power in He-man's sword comes from the castle, or the Sorceress. Bear in mind here that Skeletor has both, and should therefore have had the power to deny him the added strength that the sword provides him. Anything for a happy ending, right guys?
-Most of Skeletor's usual Rogues Gallery has changed. The only returners are Evil-Lyn and Beast Man -- the latter of which never speaks and does not interact with animals, as the cartoon version does. Instead he's more used a like a poor man's Sabretooth. The other villains were invented for the film, so that again, there would be an excuse to release some new figurines.

Something tells me this has nothing to do with him not knowing it's not real bacon.

That Being Said: I never had a problem with the movie being too different from the series as a child. Never. Now, you might say "But DVD Fairy, that's because you're a girl!", and I therefore might not have been as into the series, but I am also a girl who had two big brothers. So a lot of things I watched were things directed at boys. When I was a kid, I noticed differences, sure, but I didn't care because unlike the cartoon, the movie, to me (aged 4 at least), was real. And it's okay if things are a little different when it's real. People say it's okay that the first Ninja Turtles movie was nothing like the cartoon because it more closely resembled the comics. But if you were born around 1984 and were a turtles fan, then it's very likely that you didn't READ the comics at the time and only knew the cartoon. So to make concessions for one fandom and not the other is kind of pointless.

The choice to set most of the film on Earth, I thought, was a smart move to make, not only from a budget standpoint, but also because it would allow newcomers a familiar entry point. Julie and Kevin are there so that kids who have never seen the movie have somebody normal to identify with (and as a child I met more kids who were interested in MEETING their heroes and not being them, so having people project onto them instead of He-man makes sense to me).

The backstory about Julie's parents seems kind of dark and out of nowhere, but I think it was handled well enough within the film, and every now and again produced some interesting scenes. There's a moment where Julie is tricked into thinking her mother is alive, which genuinely disturbed me when I was little, because I could not imagine anyone being so mean as to do that to a person, and the ending, I'll admit, always makes me really happy, even if it's kind of deus ex machina (spoiler: She and Kevin are sent home to a time just before her parents died, so she is able to prevent them getting on the flight that would have led to it).

Another thing that I really, REALLY enjoy about the movie is its score, composed by Bill Conti, who also composed the famous Rocky theme. Skeletor's entrance music at the beginning of the movie is my ringtone, in fact. I absolutely love this soundtrack, and my only regret is that the album doesn't include the Cosmic Key music, which I find rather pretty.

Dolph Lundgren might be hard to understand, but he looks perfect for the part, and I won't say he's the best of actors, but then you don't see a lot of facial expressions in the old cartoon, either.


Except for when it's completely inappropriate.
Of the new villains, Blade is probably one of the most interesting, because his dialogue in the movie suggests there is some assumed continuity with his character, that he's faced off with He-man before (and is excited to have another chance to). It's a shame the cartoon never took advantage of this, and is probably one of the reasons that the redesign for TriClops (one of the original rogues) in the 2002 MOTU Cartoon Series was kind of an amalgamation of the original and this new character. OR, conversely, it might be possible that Blade was developed as a version of TriClops without the eye gimmick, which would have been hard to envision on the screen back then.

Note the similarities.

Everything else that's nice I have to say about this movie belongs in its own section, so without further ado...

Here's My Main Gush: Skeletor. Holy crap do I enjoy the film version of Skeletor. Now, let me explain to you a few things about myself before I continue, because I want the level of my enthusiasm, even from an early age, to be perfectly clear: As I said before, I have two older brothers, and am the baby in the family. There was a lot of boy stuff in my house growing up, but that doesn't mean girly stuff was completely absent from my upbringing. In fact, anything that was "for girls" was special, to me, because it was just for me. Any token girl character in a series for boys was almost always automatically my favorite character, because it gave me something to identify with. However, with Masters of the Universe, I've always been more interested in Skeletor -- largely because while my brothers got to see something of the series and toys before they saw the movie, I myself started with the movie, and Skeletor is arguably the most noticeable and engaging character onscreen. He's the only one who either doesn't suffer from terrible dialogue, or is played by a good enough actor to deliver it well, and despite suffering from bad makeup (which was really the best they could do back then), his overall design was so awesome that parts of it influenced his 2002 redesign.

Pictured: Skeletor's entrance into Castle Greyskull, and the DVD Fairy's ringtone music.
My first review on this site featured Frank Langella, too, and I promise that my choosing this as the second full review was entirely coincidental, but I have to stop and mark his performance in this. I have always been impressed by the work he put into this -- largely because this wasn't the most ambitious of productions, and most of the time all he got to do was stand around, monologue and act menacing. He was playing a movie version of a cartoon villain, who -- let's face it -- looks and sounds pretty damn corny when measured up to most others. From that whiny voice to the groan-worthy one-liners, he was a bad guy in what was clearly a kid's show, and Langella had the balls to take the role he was given and try to play him totally straight. He studied the role, and he worked with Meg Foster (Evil-Lynn) to develop some on their background to work out body language, and once shooting started up, he stormed in, full regalia, and played Skeletor like a fantasy villain would be played by today's standards. (And fair enough that Nostalgia Critic didn't like his "becoming a god" speech, but I think that the dialogue was bad and Langella made it his bitch, end of story.)

Not pictured: The DVD fairy getting happy chills.
I still openly acknowledge that this Skeletor breaks all the Evil Overlord rules. He would rather his enemy be broken than killed. He doesn't heed the sound advice of his advisors. He conveniently looks away from avenues of escape (or entry), and almost always shows a greater willingness to bump off one of his own followers for screwing up where even he has failed multiple times than somebody who is actually doing him real damage.

But man, he's fun to watch.

In Conclusion: Masters of the Universe is not a good movie, but for the right people, and when you're in the right mood, it makes for an afternoon of nostalgic fun.

Cutthroat Island (Originally posted to IGN)

I wrote an earlier draft of this as a user review at IGN.com, so the posting can also be viewed in a less polished form here, under the title "A better female pirate than Elizabeth Swann, weighed down by a bad 90s script."

Title: Cutthroat Island
Copyright: 1995 by MGM, DVD distributed by Lionsgate, through Studio Canal
Starring: Geena Davis, Matthew Modine, and Frank Langella
Running Time: 119 minutes
Score: 6/10
Buy?: Buy at Amazon.com for $9.98 or less.

Let's get one thing straight, here: Cutthroat Island is hardly cinema gold. It wasn't a sleeper film. It wasn't even that much of a cult film. The fact of the matter is that Lionsgate tried to make a Pirate movie at a point in time when there was no market for one, and there wouldn't be one until the surprise success of Pirates of the Caribbean in the next decade. Compared to other action/adventure films of the time that were not adult enough to garner an R rating, though, the many flaws this movie had (poor 90s dialogue, inexplicable explosions worthy of a Troma film, and less-than-okay creature effects in places, for instance) were pretty much par for the course for movies of the time -- most of which were better received critically and financially than this movie.

Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about what's good about the movie. After the success of the PotC franchise, Cutthroat Island received a slight spike in sales when the DVD was released and banished to the bargain bins in Wal-Marts. No one should be surprised by this. When Pirates fans were in the stores, a DVD selling for five bucks with the right kind of plotline for pirate-enthusiasts was just appealing enough to be bought on impulse, which is actually how I found it. (We'll talk about my unhealthy tolerance for the Pirates movies in later entries.)

Base reaction? For a five-dollar DVD, the story actually wasn't that bad, and don't let the summary fool you. But since this movie has only seen sales recently because of the popularity of certain Johnny Depp populated movies, it seems only fair to compare it to Pirates of the Caribbean in places, since this is obviously the audience that will buy the most copies.

The first thing I'll hand to the makers of Cutthroat Island is that historically it's a little easier to place -- maybe not historically accurate, but if you're watching a campy 90s adventure flick, you're out of your mind for looking for accuracy to begin with. You're seeing Port Royale and the Caribbean Isles during the reign of King Charles II -- a time period only briefly glimpsed in the PotC franchise at the start of the first film. (How can you tell in PotC? Their wigs are all brown at the start, and when it flashes forward, they're all gray and white. It's the only nod you get to the time period in all three movies.) But, if you're obsessive enough to try and tie Cutthroat Island to the franchise, (and don't listen to Wikipedia when it says CI is referenced in the first Pirates movie; this is inaccurate) you can just go ahead and lie to yourself, saying that the adventures of Morgan Adams took place when Jack Sparrow was still in diapers. (Okay, maybe not diapers. But he's probably at an age where bugs are more interesting than girls.)

None of the mysticism of the PotC franchise is present in this film, so there'll be no sea monsters or cursed treasures -- in fact superstition in general is severely underplayed here. The story focuses upon Morgan Adams (Geena Davis), the daughter of pirate Captain Black Harry Adams, who appears to have been raised aboard her daddy's ship -- at most times. At the start of the film she's on land somewhere enjoying herself at the mutual expense of some pompous French soldier. Considered a pirate in her own right (with a hefty sum on her head, too, but you wouldn't blame government officials for wanting to bring her in; she apparently causes a lot of property damage wherever she goes), she starts out seemingly a lot more attracted to the "let's get drunk and laid" aspect of being an outlaw and a little less about staying on her father's ship and getting work done.

When her uncle, Dawg Brown (Frank Langella -- surprisingly fit and imposing as a villain in this film), goes seeking parts of a treasure map that each of the other men in their family possess, her father is fatally wounded just as she is called back to the ship to help him. They escape before Dawg can claim Harry's piece of the map, which incidentally is tattooed onto his scalp. Before he dies, he tells Morgan to take the map piece and his ship, and get the treasure before her uncle does. This scene is not overplayed -- Morgan is initially angry and emotional, but Harry talks her down. This is important, and they're pirates. There's no crying in piracy. I was worried that I would be seeing the cliche "father-slaying" scene from Dragonheart all over again, and was pleasantly surprised that the filmmakers didn't lazily decide to make Morgan's entire quest about revenge against her uncle. It's not. It's a race to her grandfather's treasure trove, and she's been given a job to do.

She accepts her task and her father's ship, but only a choice few members of the crew are willing to trust her with leadership (with good reason -- chain of command is being upset, for one, and for another, she has a reputation even among other pirates for racking up damage and being a pain in the ass). Among those willing to trust her are the quartermaster, Blair, the cabin boy, Bowen -- an object of fierce protectiveness among the crew, and Morgan's bodyguard, Glasspoole (played by Stan Shaw -- who you'll be surprised to learn, in spite of racial stereotyping common in some films of the time, is not the "slave" mentioned in the summary on the IGN website and the DVD cover).

Unable to read the Latin passages on their piece of the map, they travel to Port Royale to find someone who can. Enter William Shaw (Matthew Modine), a petty thief with some learning, who has been imprisoned for being, well, a petty thief. And for assuming that he's charming. If this character doesn't annoy you, then you yourself may be annoying. Like all area criminals at this time (including captured pirates), he is to be auctioned off as a slave (and if no one buys him, he hangs) -- which is fairly accurate for the time. We come to learn, as does Morgan (disguised as a shopping noble), that he also reads and speaks Latin, and claims to be a doctor. Unfortunately for Morgan later, the latter is only a claim.

Once he has been absorbed into the main plot, the rest of the film revolves around finding the last piece of the map (and getting it from Morgan's other, less scary uncle), finding the treasure, and eventually the final battle between Morgan's ship and Dawg Brown's, which is by itself pretty impressive.

Here's Where it Fails: The place where this film fails is chiefly the dialogue. As with most adventure films of the time, it's fairly cheesy and unrealistic. I cringe when the characters of Morgan and Shaw are hinted at being "in love" when the two actors clearly read their characters as being physically attracted to one another and little more beyond that. Some of the most tense moments lose their edge because of a horrid one liner or two. Morgan's dialogue, in particular, can be pretty bad, even unrealistic, and you can't tell if it's a fault of the writing or because she quite clearly assumes a different persona depending upon who she is with. Around her men, she's more business like. Around strangers, she's less formal. When she's trying to impress somebody? She's too formal. Failure in writing? Maybe, but at least it makes her look like a legitimately flawed character.

That being said: The action is surprisingly good. Like I said before, there are one or two explosions that defy physics, but that's the only complaint I have. It will not have the same level of random ninja stunts and swashbuckling as PotC did, but this is not a flaw. There is a good deal of brawling to be had, especially in the last 30 minutes of the film, but it's done a tad more realistically than PotC managed, simply because the filmmakers acknowledge that it's hard to depict two full crews, sporting 30+ armed men each, fencing on deck when there simply is no room for that kind of mass swordplay. The fights have a few little flashy stunts here and there, but overall, the weapons are heavy and are handled like they're heavy. (For instance, you don't see anything like Kiera Knightley's karate moves with a solid gold bo staff in hand that should weigh more than she does, as in PotC 1.) The battles on deck are chaotic, one battle bumping into another as the crewmen fight just as much for elbow room as victory.

Here's my main gush: While we're on the subject of choreography, I want to say, here, that this is where Geena Davis as Morgan Adams absolutely shined as a female action hero. Because of the way she fights with men, I would argue that she's a better feminist example of a girl pirate than Kiera Knightley ever was, and a better feminist action hero than any figure you could mention in current films -- superhero films included. Elizabeth Swann, in the course of three movies, became comparably one of the better fighters in the series for no reason, and as a pirate, a lot of unnecessary attention was drawn to the fact that she was a woman. She also never seemed to take a single blow. It makes her a horrible role model and action hero because she doesn't ever overcome adversity; she is just suddenly and inexplicably a million times better than any man or monster that opposes her. Take the most hardcore female action character today, and I guarantee that if she's faced off with a man, she will never take a punch to the face, for instance, and that's a sexist double standard. If the scene requires the fight to be brutal and tear-out, then she will inflict more pain and brutal injury on her opponent than she will ever receive, herself. This is almost a rule. A man can't hit a woman in the face even if they're in a no holds barred fight with each other. A man cannot be seen to do serious physical damage to a woman unless it's meant to instill horror (and is typically reserved for R rated movies), but a woman can beat the stupid out of a man and in as graphic detail as the director desires, and it will never hurt his rating. We see this repeated in Pirates of the Caribbean, in Watchmen, even in episodes of South Park ('Breast Cancer Show Ever' is a notable episode for this). This is not empowering. It's just saying that a woman being violent is more socially acceptable than a man being violent.

Morgan Adams defies these rules. Her fights are not overly flourished or stylized; she'll jump right in and have a good old fashioned scrap with anyone. (I noted though that she goes for the family jewels a lot -- considering she was raised on a shipful of pirates, this shouldn't surprise anyone from a characterization standpoint; she wasn't always a fully grown Geena Davis.) Her weapons are heavy in her hands. She takes numerous on-camera blows, punches to the face, slices, gunshots, and she gets up and keeps fighting -- not as though they don't phase her, but more like she's accustomed to pain and knows how to soldier through it when her life is on the line. You will not see this from a female character in many other action films, save for the best ones. She also never falls into the 'tough heroine' cliche, where you see all her guts and bravery and gusto for most of the film, only to find her helpless and in need of rescuing during the final fight. No one saves Morgan Adams besides Morgan Adams, herself, even in the face of Dawg Brown, of whom she is clearly quite afraid.

In Conclusion: This review has carried on a bit. For a couple hours of fun, five to ten bucks isn't a whole lot to pay. As I said, this movie is legitimately flawed in places, but it never claims to be Oscar-worthy material, either. For the price, and for its better qualities, putting up with the crappy dialogue is well worth it. Don't miss it if you have the spare time. Despite the scoring only being slightly above average (my rating on IGN was higher, but that was based on their scoring and not mine), the DVD fairy highly recommends this film.