Pirates (1986)

Directed by Roman Polanski. Starring Walter Matthau, Cris Campion, Damien Thomas, Roy Kinnear, Charlotte Lewis, Olu Jacobs, Ferdy Maybe, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Richard Pearson, David Kelly. [PG-13]

Polanski’s disastrous dud of a pirate “comedy” is so overblown and lead-footed it’s a wonder how the galleons stayed afloat. Matthau isn’t exactly inspired casting for a salty scalawag (and his wandering accent is unfathomable), but the absence of swashbuckling grace wouldn’t matter if he bothered to move at all. Instead, he mostly just stands around muttering balderdash while waiting for the story to pull him along to the next escapade. Plot and adventure are in short supply here, and although there’s sporadic color to be found in the galley, the ones that really matter are trivial; Matthau’s cabin boy (Campion), for example, is about as dull as escapist fantasy characters come. The film certainly looks handsome, even when the images being presented aren’t ones to be savored (like a dinner scene serving up a dish of boiled rat that goes on way too long), but it just feels like wasted money onscreen when there’s nothing happening to all the paraphernalia to hold the audience’s interest. A lot of talk, talk, talk, broken up by fits of tedious action/slapstick…what a bilge-sucking bore. Philippe Sarde provides the generic symphonic fanfare.

30/100