"Cutthroat Island" - Maria's Take

Pirates, treasure, exploding ships, cutlasses, scene-stealing monkeys; never would I have imagined a movie jam-packed with all of these things could ever be so painfully boring. Starring the usually charismatic and likable Geena Davis and Matthew Modine, "Cutthroat Island" succeeded with sucking these two actors dry of any personality. The script was abysmal, the acting was stilted and poorly directed, the sound editing was obnoxiously uneven, the special effects and makeup were sloppy, and the sets were cheesy.

Hmm, I wonder why this movie bombed?!

The plot is so cliche it is barely worth mentioning. Morgan, portrayed lazily by Geena Davis, is a lady pirate searching for her late father's treasure. She happens upon William Shaw (according to Zach--I heard him called "Sean"),played by Matthew Modine, some sort of thief-liar-slave, whom she buys and falls in love with. They are racing against Frank Langella's character, one whose name I missed, who also wants the treasure--basically because they needed an antagonist. Good wins out, blah, blah, blah.

My biggest issue with this film was the writers didn't even try to write dialogue authentic for the time period. Actually, to be fair, little of this movie's production reflected the mid 17th century. The jokes were mostly visual and usually consisted of either a kick in the groin or the monkey (who is, inexplicably, either mentioned or seen in every shot) thinking he's people. One of the British soldiers looks remarkably like Louis XIV, which doesn't begin to make sense, and the other characters look straight out of the Dark Ages.

This movie failed for a great number of reasons: it was painfully tedious, the story took far too long to resolve itself, the characters were boring or generic at best, and most noticeably, the filmmakers tried way too hard. This film tried to be eveything, a romance, an action flick, a costume drama, a comedy; and yet it failed at every one. Ultimately, it was a boring 2 plus hours of cinematic disaster that dragged a couple of likable actors down with its sinking ship.

On the bright side, this is EXACTLY the type of film Zach and I created this blog to review. It is Hollywood at it's most cringe-worthy, and to that I say cheers to you, Mr. Bigshot Producer, I hope that 140 million dollar loss feels really good right about now.