PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES - A movie so dull I walked out after 90 minutes

About fifteen minutes into the latest PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movie, Dame Judi Dench -  her ear be-slobbered by Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow -  asks "Is that all?"  I felt very much the same way as I waded through this over-stuffed and yet ultimately vacuous blockbuster.  For let us be clear: this is an absolutely terrible movie. Derivative, muddled and, sin of all sins, dull.  I walked out after 90 minutes, leaving a good 45 minutes of the movie left to run.  Still, not to worry.  No doubt the shameless hacks chez Bruckheimer are penning episodes 5 asnd 6 of this lucrative franchise as we speak.

So, what it all about, Alfie? Three ships are sailing to South America to find the Fountain of Youth (TM).  One ship contains Spaniards, trying to capture the elixir for their king. (We don't hear much more about them.)  The second ship contains Captain Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush), who has swapped piracy for privateering - the only credible bit of character development in the film - and an interesting analogy for the way in which this franchise has sold-out from camp farce to clunking establishment milk-cow. The final ship contains Captain Blackbeard (Ian McShane, presumably cast because he is the only working actor more wrinkled than Keith Richards), Blackbeard's daughter Angelica (Penelope Cruz) and Captain Jack Sparrow himself.  The movie sees these crews assembled, reach land in South America, do battle with some cannibalistic mermaids, and then set off over land to find the fountain.  That's the point at which I left.

I left because it had become painfully clear that ON STRANGER TIDES was suffering from two structural problems that were not going to be resolved by simply hanging about for another forty five minutes. First up, the movie commits the cardinal sin of subverting the very formula that made it successful!  In the first flick, which I rather liked, the prevailing atmosphere was "camp family fun"! We had pretty young lovers to root for,  a little bit of spookiness, and every now and then a bit of naughtiness in the form of Captain Jack Sparrow - a pirate so effete and ineffectual he was a walking spoof of the pirate movie genre.  By contrast, in ON STRANGER TIDES, Sparrow is front and centre throughout, rather than being used as comic relief. His presence tires -  he has become the establishment - in fact, he's rather good at getting out of scrapes even if all the set-piece fight scenes are lifted straight out of Indiana Jones or earlier PIRATES films. Worst of all, the camp Jack Sparrow has to sustain the main love story, with a smouldering Angelica, utterly at odds with his camp style. All of this leaves Geoffrey Rush's Barbosa as by far the most interesting, and certainly the only entertaining, figure on screen.

The second big problem is the direction. Rob Marshall is, simply put, a terrible director. And here, I am looking to his previous films too - CHICAGO, NINE and MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA.  Marshall seems to direct by throwing everything at the kitchen wall - more characters, more plot, over-loaded production design, more angles, more cuts, more orchestration (Hans Zimmer particularly irritating here). The editing style is the biggest culprit here, especially in the set-pieces.  Marshall doesn't seem to be able to trust the action itself - the choreography (ironic given his background) to be interesting enough to hold our attention. So he cuts, cuts, cuts, all the time holding the camera so close to the action that I wanted to pull back for breath.  Take for example an early scene where Sparrow is dancing on top of the King's dinner table and then swings from chandeliers. Why not just let the camera sit back and see his quick, deft, steps across the table?  The whole thing smacked of complete lack of confidence in the material.

Of course, added to these two big structural problems, there are many minor irritations. The cavalier hijacking of the Indiana Jones format. The way in which the hero and heroine conveniently happen upon trap-doors. The fact that the producers evidently thought - "you know, those vampire movies are making a bunch of money - let's get some hot teenage girls and give them vampire teeth!".  Worst of all, the screenwriters actually gave us a love story between a priest and a mermaid. I have seen anything as crass since the notorious soap opera Sunset Beach had the Father Fit storyline.  Weak.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES is on global release.

VENUS - Brit comedic drama at its best

Another wicked comedy at the London Film Festival courtesy of Hanif Kureighi (MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE) and Roger Michell (NOTTING HILL). In just 90 minutes you get laugh-out-loud comedy and serious emotion - a great cinema experience. The story focuses on a bunch of ageing luvvies played by the still scoundrelous Peter O'Toole, Leslie Philips, Richard Griffiths and Vanessa Redgrave. Into their world of cash-in-hand bit parts, solid drinking and cursing stumbles a pot-noodle-eating, mini-skirt-wearing, Alcopop-guzzling chav. She's Leslie Philips' character's grand-neice and is meant to be helping him out while lookin for a job. He can't stand her and the joy of the movie is that it confronts our prejudices about her. As the movie unravels and Peter O'Toole takes her under his wing we see that she is a decent if conflicted girl. At least, no less decent than O'Toole's lascivious old rogue.

This being a script by Kureishi, the humour is course though literary, the emotions seem real and sexuality is dealt with in a head-on manner. That - in combination with the fact the older people are treated as "normal" - not made into wise old women, or grumpy old men - is refreshing. The acting is tremendous - especially from O'Toole and Jodie Whittaker - the girl playing "Venus". The photography is rubbish, of course - but that's probably the point. London - filmed on super-16 with no attempts to hide the damp grey grimness of it - looks rubbish as does Whitstable. If there is any point to this film it is that underneath surfaces that look rough, worn, low you can still find friendship, love and vitality.

VENUS played Telluride, Toronto and London 2006 and opens in the US on December 15th. It opens in the UK on January 26th 2007.

THE HISTORY BOYS - the play's the thing

THE HISTORY BOYS is a little bit like NEIL YOUNG: HEART OF GOLD. By which I mean that the stuff of which it is made is of such high quality that the resulting movie is almost bound to succeed no matter what the competence of the team behind the camera. Neil Young anchors a great live concert and with THE HISTORY BOYS - the award-winning play written by Alan Bennett and staged by Nicholas Hytner at the National - we have a superb piece of theatre.

The play is superficially extremely English and for the benefit of overseas readers I'll go into some details. (Apologies to the locals.) THE HISTORY BOYS is set in a grammar school (a state-funded school that selects pupils on the basis of academic ability and gives them a classic humanist education.) The boys have just passed their A-levels (school-leaving exams) with flying colours. As a result, instead of going on to any other university or starting work they are returning to school for yet another term in order to cram for the entrance exams to get into Oxford and Cambridge - then and arguably still the best universities in the UK. This might seem quaint but the old "Mode E" entrance was only scrapped ten years ago, although it had already been changed so that you could sit the papers in your final year of A-levels rather than returning for another "seventh" term (semester). The entrance exams tested not just Gradgrindian facts - it assumed that anyone sitting the papers would be full of facts . Rather, the exams aimed to test the capacity for original and clear thinking, personality and flair.

And of course this opens up a conflict of interest. Given the time pressures these boys are under - should they continue with their lesisurely pursuit of authentic learning for its own sake - or should they hastily bluff contrary opinions just to stand out from the crowd? Mr Hector, the history boys' teacher believes that the boys should learn for the sake of learning and be honest in the interviews. But the Headmaster - eager for quantifiable results, not inspiration - hires a young tutor to get the boys to jump through the hoops.

The mechanics of getting the boys into Oxbridge might seem anachronistic but I think the issues it touches on are absolutely relevant. The Gradgrindian headmaster wants to do well in the league tables - a rather Blairite concern - and the boys are merely cannon fodder for his campaign. I also wonder how much room there is for the sort of indulgent liberal arts degree that I enjoyed in a world where students are accumulating debt. To be sure, if I knew I was going to start my working life in considerable debt I might have been more keen to study a practical degree than waste time reading eighteenth century French utopians. These days universities are vocational training courses for investment bankers and management consultants - doctors and lawyers. Gone are the "well-rounded men".

The high drama of THE HISTORY BOYS arises from the conflict between these two modes of teaching, mediated by a third teacher - a woman who bemoans history as the study of the incompetence of men. But the real heart of the play - the real emotional drama - arises from its treatment of homosexuality. For Hector is a man whose homosexuality is an open secret and who has a penchant for being overly affectionate with his boys. And one of those boys is in love with another of them - something everyone knows.

The comedy of the piece - and it is very, very funny - arises from peculiarly English concerns. Alan Bennett is a master at ridiculing the particular class preoccupations of English society. So there are jokes at the expense of Hull and Sheffield and the best anti-Welsh joke on film since A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. There's also an absolutely hysterical five-minute skit that is entirely in French. Oddly enough, there are no subtitles which suggests to me a certain presumption about the audience on the part of the film-makers. One wonders whether they will subtitle it when the movie goes to the US. I also wonder how the US market will take to the play's rather indulgent treatment of a teacher who is, after all, fondling his students, especially after the recent peadophila scandals in the Church.

I am not sure if THE HISTORY BOYS is great cinema in terms of the camera angles, sound editing etc. I was too busy laughing hysterically or sympathising with Hector and Posner to care. It was an absolute pleasure to be in the midst of some bloody good writing and acting. And if the movie was explicitly theatrical in its staging - and especially in the denouement - this was not an issue for me at all.

THE HISTORY BOYS opened today in the UK, opens in the US on November 21st and opens in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany in Spring 2007.