Pirates and Christians

Saw Pirates of the Carribean last night – and was pretty disappointed. I wasn’t quite as massive a rap for the first one: I do think that some of the enthusiasm was overblown, but there were quite a few parts in Pirates that left a lot to be desired. Orlando Bloom should one day have a fight to the death with Hayden Christiansen and Keanu Reeves to decide who is the more wooden, because I find him almost unbearable to watch. It consistently feels like he’s reading from a not-particularly-well-written script. And while Keira Knightley might have the market cornered for pouty english actresses at the moment, she certainly left quite a bit to be desired.

As you’d expect Johnny Depp turns in a really decent performance, despite not always having a wonderful script to work with. Regardless of the specific kind of eccentricity, if you were casting a slightly strange male lead in a film right now and hadn’t had a crack at getting Johnny Depp in to do it – you would be kidding yourself. He is very good. And the stuff with the cool tentacle beard on “Davy Jones” was pretty cool to say the least. But I even thought that some of the special effect stuff let itself down in a couple of places – there was a couple of moments where you started thinking that you were watching animation: not the ideal.

And so that this isn’t just a straight movie review, this article from “Out of Ur” (a consistently good performer blog from the Christianity Today people) has some very valid points on the way christians react to movies, and looks at some of the reasons behind it (although I think they are over-stating the badness of the Pirates film). Pretty fair comments, and while I’m not really one to get out the placards and protest against any movies, let alone Harry Potter or Pirates of the Carribean, there’s no doubt that as chrisitians we need to be consistently evaluating why we’re “opposed” to some things and allow others. Where you draw these line I’m not sure, but at very least when you do – they need to be straight ones.