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Saw Pirates of the Caribbean with Kam last night. Much fun. I recommend going with a fan of pirate movies; you might well enjoy it even if you don't, but you'll probably enjoy it more if you do.

(No spoilers here other than listing the lead actors, which is only a spoiler if, like me, you don't recognize some of them.)

It seems to me that Hollywood is perfecting the art of the action comedy. Some action movies have funny moments, and some comedies have action sequences, but I'm talking about a finely balanced blend of the two, as recently exemplified by Charlie's Angels 2 and Pirates.

I was surprised to discover at the end of the movie that Jerry Bruckheimer was the producer of this film; I associate his name with movies like Crimson Tide, The Rock, Con Air, and Armageddon, each of which features lots of noisy action and exactly one woman. The role of a woman in a Bruckheimer movie, I always thought, was to establish in the first five minutes that the leading man has someone to come home to, and (sometimes) to give the leading man an emotional scene at the end when he comes home. Other than that, no women onscreen at all.

So I was surprised that Pirates was a Bruckheimer production, because it featured a very strong female lead, as well as a potentially good minor female character introduced halfway through who we don't get to see enough of.

I was startled by another thing in the Pirates credits: somehow I'd missed the fact that Orlando "Legolas" Bloom (some nice pics at FilmStew.com; be sure to check the second page too) was one of the stars of this movie, and I didn't recognize him at all during the movie, though I did think he looked vaguely familiar. He may be pretty as Legolas, but I liked him a lot better (both in terms of looks and character) in this.

I also failed to recognize Keira Knightley, who had a rather prominent role in The Phantom Menace.

I did recognize various other actors when they first appeared: Jonathan Pryce (who a lot of people know as the Rupert Murdoch-like character in the recent Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, or as the spokesman in those Infiniti (?) TV ads, but whom I always think of as the lead in Brazil), Johnny Depp (whom I've had a crush on ever since 21 Jump Street, and who's great in this, with a bit of the same kind of swishy/fey but swaggering style that Peter O'Toole displayed in Lawrence of Arabia—Depp was apparently trying to incorporate influences as diverse as "the idea of Keith" Richards and cartoon skunk Pepe Le Pew), and, of course, Geoffrey Rush, probably best-known for Shine (which I haven't seen), but also fondly remembered as Henslowe in Shakespeare in Love, among many other fine roles. I like him a lot. He was most recently the voice of Nigel the pelican in Finding Nemo.

Which brings me to other movies, but I'll do that in a separate entry.

Anyway, I enjoyed Pirates quite a bit. Fun, funny, spooky, good action sequences, good character interactions, a decent script despite a few holes in the plot. And probably better on the big screen than the small one.

But you should bear in mind that I, unlike everyone else in the world, kinda liked Cutthroat Island (Geena Davis basically playing Errol Flynn—what's not to like?), so my tastes may be questionable in these matters.