Excellent, smart action film.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Some hokum about a Caribbean pirate's nest. Gene Kelly pretends to be Judy Garland's dream man, the notorious pirate Macoco. He rescues her from a planned marriage to the walrus-like Walter Slezak, she discovers that Kelly isn't a pirate at all but the dancer in a troupe of traveling players. It all ends happily.This kind of musical is kinetic and over the top, as suits a story about egotistic, hammy actors. The dialog can be pretty funny too. Garland has just been shrieking at some visitors to leave. They don't listen. Kelly, holding a whip, saunters up to them and quietly mutters, "Get out," and they leave at once. "You should try underplaying sometime," he tells her.It's not one of Cole Porter's most inspired scores, despite the blare and thunder given it by the music department. One song, "Niña," searches desperately for lyrics that rhyme. "Love of My Life" is pleasant enough, sung by Judy Garland, but the only memorable tune is "Make 'Em Laugh" -- I mean "Be a Clown." It's hyperkinetic vaudeville and exhilarating.As I say, it's all overacted, but that's in keeping with the story. Kelly has never been more acrobatic, swinging from ropes, dancing with a cutlass, turning calisthenics into a ballet for the common man. Even when he's not dancing, Kelly's postures, knees bent, fingers fluttering, suggested a coiled spring about to be released.The screenplay is a little weak and, alas, much of the success of a musical depends on the libretto. Everybody seems to have had a hand in bringing S. N. Behrman's play to the screen except Comden and Green. Betty Comden and Adolf Green were experts at putting together the story behind the songs in films like "On The Town" and "Singin' In The Rain." But penetrating and occasionally challenging wit is replaced here by mixed identities and pratfalls.Kelly's acting is surprisingly good -- in a properly theatrical way -- and Judy Garland brings some life to otherwise clunkish scenes.

Like their 1945 artistic disappointment, "Yolanda and the Thief", producer Arthur Freed and director Vincent Minnelli strived to give cinema fans something different with their version of the 1942 Broadway play "The Pirate" which had starred the phenomenally famous stage couple of Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne. For MGM's rendition of that comical battle of the sexes, they added songs, here by Cole Porter, and in their first pairing in six years, Gene Kelly and Judy Garland. By this time, Gene was a star but Judy, already a legend, was undergoing emotional problems, and the result was a film that by the time of its release was more famous for its backstage drama than the on-screen drama.If Judy was ill, it doesn't show, and even if she believed she was being upstaged, that doesn't show as well. She's hysterically funny, amazingly sexy and at her best in singing her big number, "Mack the Black", as she yearns for a life of adventure with her life-long fantasy of the notorious pirate who realistically seems to be twice her age, yet makes her want him all the more. Along comes her social climbing aunt (Gladys Cooper, as regal as ever) who has arranged her marriage to the town's mayor (portly Walter Slezak). Not exactly anybody's idea of a romantic marriage, Slezak has longed for her from afar as well, and Cooper knows a Garland/Slezak pairing will put plenty of coin in her own pocket.Along comes a traveling player (Gene Kelly) who "insults" Garland in several ways, most comically by getting her soaking wet. "What are you, a top?", Garland roars as he spins around her in his efforts to romance her. But Kelly, who has already made an effort with practically every other lady in the town through the Douglas Fairbanks spoof "Nina", and when he manages to hypnotize Garland while putting on his show, learns of her yen for Mack the Black and upon meeting Slezak decides to use that to win her from the portly mayor.An update in play writing terms of Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew", Garland wants nothing to do with Kelly until he claims to be the pirate in disguise. But Kelly knows the truth of who Slezak really is, and this might lead to his own doom, even if Garland is responsible for it first when she smashes everything in sight after a row with him. Garland gets a beautiful ballad, "Love of My Life", while Kelly gets the first chance for the public to hear one of Cole's most amusing film songs, "Be a Clown", reprised of course with Judy much later on. Breathtakingly filmed and fast paced, this isn't deserving of its flop status, and as several critics pointed out at the time, it was indeed ahead of its time. Garland and Kelly are even more exciting than their first effort, "For Me and My Gal", and Kelly showed with both this and a remake of "The Three Musketeers" the same year that he was in league with Fairbanks, Colman and Errol Flynn when it came to the art of swashbuckling. Cooper is coolly calculating, Slezak a memorable villain, and they are joined by another veteran film villain, George Zucco, who appears as the judge when Kelly's scheme catches up with him late in the film.

"The Pirate" was a troubled production. Not only was Judy Garland at her lowest due to her health and her addiction, but the film was considered a mess by the studio when they previewed it. So, they re-tooled various parts of the film and released it--to less than stellar reactions from the public. Despite having Gene Kelly and Garland and the full MGM glossy treatment, the film didn't connect with folks and it lost money...a lot according to IMDb. Plus it didn't help that the film was originally meant as a comedy and songs were slapped into the script (sloppily).The film's basic plot is rather clever. Judy Garland plays a nice young lady who has been betrothed to the Mayor (Walter Slezak)--a seemingly boring old man. She's accepted her fate, though a traveling actor (Kelly) sees this as a waste--as he wants her himself. He tries to court her and is rather unsuccessful until he hypnotizes her and discovers she is a bad girl at heart and wants a blood-thirsty pirate as a lover. So, he does what any guy would do--announces that HE is the dreaded pirate Macoco! The problem is someone in town really IS Macoco but has assumed a respected guise. What's to come of all this? See the film...or not! My advice is NOT! I must admit that although I have probably seen more musicals than most anyone you'd ever meet, I am not a huge fan of the genre. This is mostly because too often the songs and plot aren't integrated well. Too often, folks break into song for no reason whatsoever. In "The Pirate", for example, Judy bursts into song when she thinks the man she loves is dead. Huh?!? Also the songs themselves often don't fit the story at all (such as "Be a Clown" at the end of the film--where they obviously gave up on the plot and was integrated well into "Singing in the Rain"). But worst of all, despite Cole Porter being the writer, it's obviously NOT his best. Too many of the songs are either dull or have lyrics that made my brain hurt. The worst was the opening song "Niña" which uses words like 'neuresthenia' and 'schizophrenia' (terms that weren't even known at the time the film was set). Finally, some of the production numbers are just insane. This is supposed to be set on a Caribbean Island--yet they have the most ridiculous song and dance number where Kelly performs on a set that only could be on a sound stage. Overall, despite being a nice looking film, "The Pirate" is among the worst MGM made in this era.

In its classic era Hollywood was not a place where artistes could conceive and execute projects exactly to plan. Often a production would change hands, get scrapped, revived, or overhauled completely into a new genre according to changing needs and resources. That's not an admonition - it's simply the way they created quality entertainment. The Pirate was not the first straight-ahead comedy drama to receive a musical makeover halfway through production.MGM, in the middle of what would one day be known as its golden age of musicals, probably thought they were onto an easy winner because they had all the finest musical talent of the day at their disposal. They brought in Arthur Freed to produce, Vincente Minnelli to direct, with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly as stars. They even managed to coax Cole Porter into writing the score. It couldn't fail... could it? The trouble is, such hasty talent stuffing sometimes backfires. Let's begin with the two leads. Garland, had worked continuously since childhood and was by now only being kept going with the amphetamines she would eventually become hooked on. She was running out of steam and it shows in her rather uneven performance, veering from theatrical exaggeration to bizarre, doped-up eroticism. Kelly by contrast was at the top of his game, but he looks daft in that moustache, and his performance relies more on his second-rate acrobats than his first-rate dancing. Garland and Kelly are however fantastic in the comical ornament-smashing scene. This is easily the best moment in the picture, which just goes to show how underused their musical abilities are.Vincente Minnelli was by now established as a unique and highly effective director of musicals. He had a method of giving character and dynamics to every number, making the camera and the colours part of the choreography. A great example is the song Nina, which is shot entirely in two or three continuous takes. Minnelli leads us into the song tracking over to the "Nina" in the boldest colours, then alights on one "Nina" after another, delicately framing each in a painterly composition. He holds our interest throughout this long routine, with the camera in close to establish the premise of the number then moving out to show off Kelly's athletics, moving in again for the cigarette-kiss trick, before moving out again for the final group dance. It's just a shame that The Pirate has too few songs, and not nearly enough dance.Minnelli was also a competent director of non-musical action, particularly crowd scenes. His expert use of camera movement provides Kelly with a fantastic entrance. We dolly back through the crowds, focus on a crate with the acting company's details on it, then pull back and up to reveal Kelly being hoisted aloft. Shortly after this comes a bit of a misfire though. Minnelli, for very good reasons, often liked to keep actors in mid-shot rather than closeup, drawing attention to them through use of framing and movement. As Kelly strolls through the crowd advertising his company, we are focused on him because he is very animated while his audience are unnaturally still. It gives what should be a lively moment a sense of emptiness, and I can't help thinking of the real world audience getting bored wondering when the first musical number will strike up.As for Cole Porter's music, it's far from his best. The plot is, as Kelly later pointed out, a huge inside joke that it took audiences twenty years to get, although if it was at the expense of Douglas Fairbanks, wasn't it also being made twenty years too late? The MGM studio-bound look is particularly stifling for such an exotic, adventuresome setting. All in all, The Pirate has plenty of colouring, but not enough flavour, and is one of the most disappointing of MGM musicals.