Waste of time

Am I Missing Something?

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I accedently found this movie and saw that it was a comedy with pirates in it and alot of awesome comedians where in it. This looked awesome and why had I never heard of this movie before.The movie is kind of "Meh". Not boring but not that funny. It has like 2-3 good jokes and it feels like many thing just runs dry. It has some strange turns and it feels like many characters is not used to their full potential. This movie has several rape jokes and I feel that thats something that is not as okey to joke about today which is intresting.

The hardass Yellowbeard(who rapes and kills whoever he wants to) was the most dreaded pirate(and this fits in all the clichés of the subgenre… a man loses his hand and replaces it with a hook, we have a blind man(DareDevil has nothing on this guy, his acute hearing is impeccable) though it's both eyes, we get a mutiny, a boarding and a ship battle at sea, if only half of this takes place on the ocean, a treasure island and even a final showdown), and when he was captured, his booty had not been recovered. He finds that he has a son who doesn't take after him at all, and since his head contains the only map of it(…literally; it's actually tattooed on there), the two have to somehow work together(since he talks his father out of decapitating him). But his old his second-in-command, Mr. Moon, who betrayed him and got him thrown in jail, is along for the ride, and they're also being hounded by the Royal Navy. The biggest problem with this spoof, which certainly had potential, is how hit and miss the, at times remarkably uninspired, material is. We get jokes about the uptight British upperclass and sailors wanting women(or something to replace such) on the ships, along with swashbuckling(which can be genuinely engaging and exciting, some of the gags reminiscent of spaghetti Western saloon brawls), but there are obvious missed opportunities, and this does tend to either go for being funny or forwarding the plot, where a good comedy does both seamlessly. Even when things happen, sometimes they make so little impact on the audience that you find yourself forgetting that it occurred. The cast have their moments, such as Cheech and Chong, Chapman in the titular role, Cleese as the apparently helpless sightless man, and Idle as the face of the military. And the ending is definitely good. The filming and editing has its moments. There is a lot of violent, bloody and disturbing content and brief female topless nudity in this. I recommend this to the biggest fans of the Monty Python crew. 6/10

John Cleese claims this was the worst film he has ever been. I don't know when was the last time he ever quote that but I respectfully disagree now that I've seen the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (ironically he was the best thing in it). But on the other hand I can't and won't go with the audience who says this one of the greatest comedies of all time. It's a good and a quite funny comedy and that's it. Just take a look at the cast and you know this could've been the greatest comedy from the 1980's and one of the most spectacular ever filmed."Yellowbeard" has the Monty Python team (Graham Chapman, Eric Idle and John Cleese, in fact) plus Cheech and Chong, plus Mel Brooks team (Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, Peter Boyle) and names like James Mason, Martin Hewitt and a cameo by David Bowie (really tough to find him). Amazing, right? This wild bunch is united here in a pirate movie about a famous pirate named Yellowbeard (Chapman) and his struggle to put his hands on a treasure he hid several years ago. And now, other pirates, kings, Yellowbeard's wife and son and other clumsy characters are on the run to get this treasure.Several comedy teams are here but the humor selected here was the classic Python somewhat contained, very undemonstrative, not much of what we loved to see in "The Life of Brian" or "The Meaning of Life". It's less anarchic, less revolutionary, not much striking as the group tended to be. It's just an goofy pirate story with no social/political jokes.I'm not saying you can't have fun with this but it's less than what it's supposed to be expected with a cast like this. There are plenty of good moments here like Feldman's exchange of lines with Boyle about the whereabouts of Yellowbeard: "I was following him but I thought I was being followed, do you follow me?" or Yellowbeard's scheme to find the buried treasure in the sand: "Stagger, stagger, crawl, roll..." That is a good way to describe the film in a few dull moments when there's many attempts of delivering a joke that ends up being not funny. On a really sad note this was the final film of Graham Chapman, Peter Bull and Marty Feldman (who died on the set before the film's being completed and what's even sadder is that his character's death was terribly well-made, you can really see that a stand-in was used to replace him). Not much the kind of project you want it to be their last. In times when "Pirates of the Caribbean" are the latest and hottest thing to see but a little bit excessive in its development and big budget, it's nice to look back at a good comedy with a notable cast that can bring almost the same level of hilarious and adventurous moments. 6/10

With this cast and budget, should have been much more of a sustained laugh fest. Nevertheless, many of the lines and visuals are classics, and everyone aboard is such a pro that you can forgive the deader stretches. Marty Feldman does a lot with not much material, while Peter Cook's beyond-deadpan mutterings are frequently hilarious. Disappointing were Peter Boyle and Tommy Chong, the latter to the point of inducing nausea. Cheech Marin fares better, but only because his character is written with marginally more dimension. Loved David Bowie's cameo and Madeline Kahn's pluckiness. James Mason, however, looks vaguely uncomfortable (not to mention feeble) in his few scenes, which, sadly, do not contain any glittering gags.All in all, you will definitely laugh, cringe, and yawn, but won't regret tuning in.