Pirates!

On Thursday night, Cowboy and I went to see the Pirates of the Caribbean II. We decided on a whim to see it opening night at midnight. You can tell you are getting old when you have to factor how late you'll get home and what time you'll be getting to bed in deciding whether to do an activity. Since I have been battling insomnia anyway, we decided it couldn't mess me up too bad. (I was wrong, but that's not the point of this entry) Cowboy had never been to an opening night showing - can you believe it? I got very excited about taking him to his first. I realized (out loud) that I haven't been to one since high school. I was excited for myself as well. I should have thought about that statement a little more thoroughly, however. When we drove up to the Pickwick, an Art Deco theater that seats 1,400 people - the oldest, biggest, and one of the best preserved theaters in the area (it still has it's original organ from the silent film days!) - I could not believe how many kids were out that late. As we tried to find parking, an experience complete with nearly being run down by all the high schoolers who were arriving at the same time we were, I tried not to be appalled by how young they looked. Once we got in and found seating - surprisingly hard to do in the huge theater - the realization of how young they truly were sunk in with every yell from one precocious group to the next. I tried not to be annoyed, and indeed, when the movie started, their excitement and energy enhanced the movie-going experience (true to memory).
As for the movie itself, I was a bit disappointed. The whole thing was simply a set up for the sequel. Usually sequels have their own story while managing to carry the bigger story arch along. Not really so in this case. As for Johnny Depp, where I was pleasantly surprised by his characterization of a pirate in the first, this script had him running scared most of the movie - decidedly un-pirate like behavior - and not really providing the opportunity to be entertained by him this time around. The other characters had very little positive development as well, and I actually stopped caring about them. Davy Jones and his oceanic crew were kind of cool, not as scary as I thought they would be from the previews, but perhaps as scary as a Disney movie could be. The C.G. was pretty creative as applied to the crew of Davy Jones - the idea being that the longer someone had been in his service, the more complete the transformation into a sea creature, and there was a good fight scene on a giant wheel, but I am getting spoiled into thinking that everyone can do that these days and it's not enough to overcome a weak story.