Pirates in your face

Last night Maggie I went to see Pirates at World's End with a group of excellent writer people I'd never met before. There are spoilers in this post but they're so minor it's not even really worth the effort I made to type this sentence.

First of all, Maggie made me a quilt for my birthday. A Quilt! The last thing I made for anyone's birthday was a coupon book for hugs and car washes. It's blue and purple which are my two favorite colors and the cat immediately claimed it as his own. So that's a good start to any evening.

So Maggie and I made excellent new friends and talked to Terry Rossio who was soooo friendly and came to stand with us in line for a bit to talk about the film. He said the movie in script form was never as long as it is on screen. Verbinski kept asking them to add things, and that makes sense because it was kind of a sensory overload type thing. It was very Bruckheimered up since Jerry produced it. Why do people let Bruckheimer touch their things?

I did thoroughly enjoy the moment when the monkey turned the gun on the parrot. I don't know why but I giggled incessantly over that.

I earned a hero tag from the group for a brief shining moment when like eight teenage boys and somebody's dad broke in line in front of us because we were all too busy listening to Terry to notice. But not Emily. She's always watchful of the teenage behavior. So I turned to them and said, "Excuse me, this is part of the line..." They hesitated. "...which you can go get at the end of."

They slinked off without actually acknowledging that we were there.

"Well put," said Terry. So now if Terry remembers me at all it's as that girl who told those boys to get the hell out of line.

The line was very, very long. I have a feeling this film will make a buck or two.

There were some great moments in the film - the aforementioned monkey threatening parrot one being my favorite - but all in all the biggest problem with it is that if you didn't see the first two you'd be hopelessly lost. There were a lot of assumed plot points and inside jokes that would confuse a viewer not already in on the whole story. I did like it better than the second one, though.

It also had this dark, artsy quality to it which I actually liked very much. I liked the multiple Jacks and weird crabs in hell thing. But the attack of the 50-foot woman was not my cup of tea. I kept thinking about how people on the other boats must be freaking out and why didn't the boat sink from all that weight?

I think at its core Pirates is a good story and carries some themes very well. I just wish it didn't feel so Bruckheimery. Watching it made me so tired Maggie and I had no energy left to go to P.F. Chang's and lecture people on why they shouldn't eat pandas or listen to Terry and Ted wax philosophic about the film, although we may also have been tired because of the hour long drive we had to make to Newport Beach.

I remember when an hour drive didn't seem that bad. I have clearly acclimated to the LA lifestyle.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, don't let Jerry Bruckheimer near your stuff. Slap his hand away or something.