Kiddie rides

Noel Vera

One thing you can say about Robert Rodriguez, he has the courage to
push his basic concept to its logical conclusion: since the films
resemble video games and comic books so much, it's only reasonable
to assume that eventually the next movie will take place inside a
video game--will, in fact, be an extended, giant-sized versions of
video games itself.

"Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over" is hardly the best of the lot; it doesn't
have the freshness of the first movie, and it doesn't have the
fairly charming Ray Harryhausen-like creatures (full-scale and
miniature) of the second. Worse, it barely has Antonio Banderas and
Carla Gugino as the kids' father and mother in it, so it barely has
the kind of familial warmth that distinguished the first two
installments. The 3-D gimmick does seem new, until you put on the
glasses…and you realize just why 3-D (or at least this version of
it) never quite caught on in the first place: the screen looks
blurry, and everything is awash in ugly shades of green and red.

The concept does sound fairly cool. Juni Cortez (Daryl Sabara) has
quit the OSS, the secret service organization the family works for,
and gone independent; he's approached to come back and do one more
assignment: enter the virtual realm of someone called The Toymaker
(Sylvester Stallone, in a rare villainous turn) and win a game
called "Game Over," saving the world, or its children anyway, in the
process. For added incentive, his sister Carmen (Alexa Vega) has
already gone in before him, and has been captured by The Toymaker;
it's up to him to rescue her.

Juni goes into this alone, and you can't help but miss the
antagonistic-affectionate sister-brother banter they go through in
their previous adventures; the rough collection of videogame-playing
youths he collects along the way is poor substitute (for one thing,
their banter isn't very funny). Ricardo Montalban as Grandfather
Cortez shows up to give proceedings some much-needed Latin charisma,
but he spends as much time flying off doing god-knows-what as
helping out his grandson. It's as if most of the family is too busy
doing more important things, and the family runt is left behind to
carry on, with the family elder to occasionally babysit; they all
show up in time for the climax, presumably so Juni wouldn't feel too
bad about the whole thing.

It would help if the film had eye-popping digital effects…but the 3-
D glasses tend to obscure what effects you can see. It would help if
even without state-of-the-art effects the action at least had some
wit or inventiveness to it, but most of what happens feels tired and
video-game flat--mostly kids falling down precipitous cliffs,
zooming down endless chutes in all kind of vehicles, and waging
tediously endless gladiator battles. It all seems tired, and
Rodriguez's direction seems tired--miles from the zip and energy he
displayed in his first-ever film, the disreputable "El Mariachi."
The only ones who seem to be enjoying themselves are Montalban,
who's allowed the kind of muscular physique he used to enjoy in the
wonderful "Wrath of Khan" (Montalban was Khan, of course), and
Stallone, who bickers with several copies of himself, one dumber
than another, and in one wonderfully nutty moment, does a wicked
impersonation of Montalban.

Otherwise: poof, kaput, pfft; this franchise looks and feels all
played out. Rodriguez seems to know this, which may be why he titled
this third film "Game Over."

"Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl" Jerry
Bruckheimer's second-latest production (his latest is the terminally
loud "Bad Boys 2") seems his silliest: he's not adapting some
mediocre TV show or overrated comic book, but an amusement-park
ride. And not just any ride, but one of the wimpiest in all of
Disneyland--a boat cruise that begins with a drop down a small
waterfall (actually a water-filled chute), a stately glide past some
dingy (if sumptuously produced) sets with creaky old robots aping
the same motions over and over again, then a ride up the same
waterfall (actually another water-filled chute with a motorized
chain to lift the boat). It's a "Tunnel of Love" ride only with
snazzier production values; the only ride more embarrassing for
adults would be "It's a Small World," with its irritating little
ditty running over and over again in your head in a hellishly
endless loop, in over a dozen languages.

This might be the moment to ask Bruckheimer: why Disneyland? The
United States has upwards of two thousand amusement parks, and he
had to pick a ride from the stodgiest. It's said that Disneyland is
the most difficult amusement park to sue when it comes to ride-
related injuries, and for good reason: the most exciting thing that
can happen to you there is falling asleep on a bench, keeling over,
and bruising your forehead on the pavement--and even then there's a
one-in-five chance that one of the park's ubiquitous street-sweepers
will catch you before you hurt yourself.

Anyway--"Pirates." What to say about it? It's a slightly welcome
change from the usual Bruckheimer style of filmmaking--the
explosions are mostly from kegs of gunpowder instead of tanks of
high octane, and you hear the swish and slash of swords instead of
the efficient whirr of automatic weaponry. There's some satisfaction
to be had from the swordfights, which are fairly inventive (it's
harder to defeat an enemy with a sword than an Uzi--you actually
have to display some agility, and not a little brains) if choppily
shot and edited. Finally there's the bright sun and gorgeous beaches
and beautiful waters of the Caribbean.

Otherwise--it's just the same old Bruckhiemer: plenty of swish and
slash, not much sense (Gore Verbinski is said to be the director,
though I wouldn't take that credit too seriously). There's a plot
involving a curse, undead pirates, and (of course) treasure beyond
counting. There's Jonathan Pryce, criminally underused as governor
of a small Caribbean town; there's Geoffrey Rush, nicely ripe and
vicious as Barbarossa, captain of the Black Pearl, the ship around
which this whole production turns; there's a few pretty faces that
make some faint impression on weary eyes, though their particular
names vanish like morning mist on stepping outside theater premises.

But the best reason, perhaps the only reason, to see this overlong
(over 140 minutes), hugely irrelevant romp is Johnny Depp as Jack
Sparrow, former captain of the Black Pearl (Babarossa stole it from
him). From his very first scene, where he gracefully steps ashore
off a sailboat that as gracefully slides to the bottom of the harbor
he's just entered, he effortlessly slips the grateful audience into
his pocket, and never lets us out till the picture's too-distant
end. He's like a Portrait of the Pirate as a Young Lush, or a gypsy
fortune-teller with a scimitar clamped between her teeth--the images
are so incongruous just looking at him makes you laugh. But Depp
isn't content to let you just look at him: his hands flutter in all
directions (you get the feeling they'd flutter away if they weren't
attached to his arms); his eyes have a mysterious, heavily mascara-
ed beauty, especially when they keep threatening to cross; his gait
is one headlong drunken stumble that never quite touches ground,
even when he's in the middle of a swordfight. Depp's performance
in "Pirates" is the equivalent of discovering a great Buster Keaton
performance inside a "Police Academy" flick (Depp here is better
than when he tried to actually mimic Keaton, in the unfunny "Benny
and Joon")--the miraculous find, the unexpected pleasure is too much
to resist; we willingly walk the plank and fall, swooning, into
Depp's (gracefully outstretched, hands fluttering) arms.

"Pirates of the Caribbean" easily wins, by default, the title
of "Most Entertaining Trifle in a Mostly Dead Summer." Well, maybe
not--Andrew Davis' "Holes" and Pixar's "Finding Nemo" are actually
fairly good films, not long, mediocre ones with wickedly amusing
performances inside them. But it's there, somewhere.

(First published in Businessworld, August 29, 2003)

(Comments? Please email me at noelbotevera@...)