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That the plot of The Curse of the Black Pearl has little to do with the Pirates of the Caribbean ride is a good thing. (And no, the movie is not populated with robotic wenches.) Caught in the middle of a long-standing feud between the fey Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp) and his arch nemesis, Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), young blacksmith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) is in love with the beautiful Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly), but she's being pressured to marry the stuffy Norrington (Jack Davenport) by her father, Governor Weatherby (Jonathan Pryce). After a failed attempt by Sparrow to escape imprisonment after a botched faux-kidnapping, Barbossa returns to snatch the mysterious Black Pearl, and steals Elizabeth away on his supernatural pirate ship. It is up to Will to venture forth and reclaim the magical artifact and woo Elizabeth away from the dull Norrington. Along the way there will be undead pirates, ancient curses, gigantic battle scenes and so many swordfights I lost count at about twelve.

It has become common consensus that Depp is the real key to The Curse of the Black Pearl. Somehow channeling the spirit of Keith Richards and C-3PO, his Sparrow is a fumbling, mumbling pirate entirely unique in the annuals of the genre. Think Queer Eye for the Pirate Guy - Depp is able to both keep tongue firmly planted in cheek while creating a character that never condescends to the audience. He, like Pirates, is silly postmodernism at its best, doing for the pirate movie what Scream did for the horror flick. With a wink, a cannon blast and a bit of supernatural skullduggery, it reinvents a genre that by any reasonable estimate should have been dead and buried thirty years ago.

My only complaint with Pirates of the Caribbean is its length. Why is this movie 143 minutes long? I counted a good five or six scenes that could have been trimmed considerably or dropped altogether with no tears shed. The plot also gets a little too convoluted for its own good: all of the backstory just isn't really that interesting, and the romance between Bloom and Knightly is completely formulaic. And while Rush and the undead pirates are all cool and spooky, keeping them a bit more in the shadows might have been a better idea. Still, there is so much to thrill to in The Curse of the Black Pearl that such complaints are mere nitpicking. When was the last time Hollywood has produced a rollicking adventure that didn't insult your intelligence but still realized it is nothing more than total popcorn entertainment? Here's a first: a movie that is actually better than the theme park ride that inspired it, instead of the other way around.

Video: How Does The Disc Look?

When I first saw Pirates of the Caribbean in the theatre last summer, I wasn't particularly impressed. Granted, it was a few weeks after it opened, which meant the print in question had been run and re-run countless times, but it still looked like a murky, waterlogged mess. So it was a nice surprise for me that this THX certified, 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen looks as good as it does. It is not perfection and suffers from a couple of considerable flaws, but looks like any great pirate movie should - a little mangy, a little greasy, but suitably charismatic.

First, the plusses: the source element is just about pristine, colors are rich and bold (and a far cry from the washed-out theatrical print I saw) and blacks perfect. Contrast is also sharp, with outdoor scenes sporting a bright and vibrant appearance. Detail is also very good, with fine textures visible (such as Depp's dirty full moon shadow), and shadow delineation above average, essential as much of the second half of the film is bathed in moonlight. Alas, the print can be a bit inconsistent: some scenes suffer from noticeable grain and slight noise. Worse, there is considerable edge enhancement throughout, although it only really annoys in the daylight scenes with heavy edge halos present. It is a shame, because The Curse of the Black Pearl could have been a new demo disc. As is, it is a perfectly fine transfer, sometimes even superb, just a bit digital-looking. And no rival for The Lord of the Rings or even the recent ALIEN Quadrilogy remasters.

Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

Well, there is certainly no argument when it comes to the the Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 surround tracks: they are awesome! I am not prone to using such dorky exclamations, but listening to Pirates of the Caribbean made me feel like a kid again. I loved the lively score by Klaus Badelt, the aggressive surrounds during the battle scenes and the excellent dialogue reproduction. The .1 LFE also delivers some deep low bass, especially on the DTS track, which also benefits from more transparent imaging and slightly more expansive frequency response. But even the DTS track isn't quite a five-star presentation, as the mix is still a bit front heavy - I hoped for a bit more ambience and consistency throughout. Ah, well, Pirates of the Caribbean still sounds pretty great. Anchors away.

A French Dolby 5.1 track is also included, along with English captions encoded as subtitles, French subtitles and true English Closed Captions.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

Ahoy, mateys! Now here is a treasure chest of extras! There is so much stuff crammed into this two-disc super-set it stands as one of the best DVDs of the year. (Really, I mean it - the marketing machine didn't pay me to say that.) No, this isn't exactly Lord of the Rings, but popcorn films need love, too, and this one sure gets a big pirate handshake.

Disc one keeps things off with not one but three audio commentaries. Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp sit down for a lively one-on-one for track one; Keira Knightly and Jack Davenport hang around for track two; and track three features the screenwriting team of Stuart Beattie, Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio and Jay Wolpert. The Knightly and Davenport track might be the most throwaway - they are a fun pair (Davenport is hilarious) but two-and- a-half hours? It is a bit much. (An audio interview with producer Jerry Bruckheimer is spliced in, which helps.) I was most surprised by how great the screenwriter track was: it all seems easy in retrospect, but "adapting" a plotless theme-park ride proved to be an enormous challenge until the quartet hit upon the idea of bringing in the supernatural element. And, for my money, Elliott & Rossio (The Mask of Zorro) are two of the best writers in Hollywood today when it comes to crafting feel-good entertainment. But, of course, the real stars here are Verbinski and Depp, the latter who continues to have a reputation as some anti-American art snob who would never lower himself to do a commentary for some commercial piece of fluff like Pirates of the Caribbean. But this track proves that assumption wrong. This is a fine track, if a bit slow - these guys start off with a whisper and don't raise the volume level any higher. (Also a problem? There voices are so similar it is hard to tell them apart.) And, like all three tracks, it runs a bit long at 143 minutes. I suspect these three could have been edited down to two with no real loss in value. But the more pirates the merrier, eh?

The remaining supplements are all on disc two, and there are a lot of 'em. The main attraction for me was the 37-minute documentary An Epic At Sea: The Making of Pirates of the Caribbean. While this doesn't have any credits saying so, I could swear I saw much of this material on one of those HBO First Look specials, so this may just be an expanded version of that. But even if it is it is pretty darn great - tons of making-of material, effects footage, premiere excerpts and production interviews with the main cast and crew, including Verbinski, Bruckheimer, Geoffrey Rush, Davenport, Knightly and Depp, who "fulfilled a childhood dream" by becoming a pirate. The doc is divided into eight individual segments (which is like having chapter stops), and there is also a "Play All" option. And like all of the included video-based footage, the documentary is presented in 4:3 full screen but with no subtitle or caption options.

Next up are a number of additional video-based featurettes and montages. Fly on the Set is 20 minutes worth of DV cam footage edited in straightforward assemblage fashion, and broken into five segments, each corresponding to a specific day on the set: "Town Attack," "Tortuga," "Blacksmith Shop," "The Cave" and "Jack's Hanging." The additional 26 minutes of Diaries - "Producer's Photo Diary," "Diary of a Pirate" and "Diary of a Ship" - are more user-friendly, with narration and a traditional storytelling structure. What is fascinating about all of this material is how it reveals the artifice of making a movie: watching the actors running around on over-lit sets and with no post-production sound or music looks incredibly silly. One also gets an enhanced appreciation for how hard acting truly is - watch how Depp is able to pull off such an inspired portrayal, completely oblivious to all the hustle and bustle around him. Maybe this guy will get an Oscar nomination after all...

If the 143-minute runtime of The Curse of the Black Pearl wasn't enough for you, then thrill to no less than 19 deleted scenes, totaling 18 minutes. Yikes! Is anything here really that integral to the story? No, but all of these scenes (or, more appropriately, short scene extensions) are perfectly fine in their own right, which is more than you can say for most of what passes for deleted material on DVDs these days. Each scene can be accessed individually or via the very handy "Play All" function, and the quality is excellent: they are presented in non-anamorphic widescreen but still look almost as good as the main feature. There is also a perfunctory 3-minute Outtakes reel set to a funky beat. Kinda funny, sorta not.

The remaining extras are an interesting and motley crew. Below Decks: An Interactive History of Pirates is a real surprise. A very expansive interactive map, complete with fancy animated transitions and cute touches, travel all around the pirate ship and check out various text facts and video vignettes featuring pirate historians and cast and crew waxing philosophical about pirate history and pirate movies, plus other nifty surprises. A great extra. (You can also access an abbreviated version of this feature via the "A Prisoner's Last Tale" option, which tells the "woeful tale of the last scallywag to attempt such a foolhardy idea" as setting sail on a pirate ship.) The Moonlight Serenade Scene Progression shows us how a single shot goes from concept to completion. This is a nicely done before-and-after effects demo, but admittedly I've seen so much of these lately that I am kinda bored with them. Pirates in the Park is more fun, an 18-minute excerpt from the television series "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color," specifically the episode "Disneyland: From The Pirates of the Caribbean to The World of Tomorrow" that aired on January 21, 1968. Uncle Walt gives us a great guided tour of how they created the ride, its animatronics and the interiors. It even takes us almost through the entire ride, which is about as close to the experience as you are going to get short of a trip to Disneyland. Great retro fun.

Finally, there is also a very comprehensive Image Gallery divided into six sections: "Inspiration," "Concept Art," "Storyboards" (for four sequences: "Blacksmith Shop," "Black Pearl Vs. Interceptor," "Dauntless Capture" and "Captain Jack Sparrow"), "Costumes," "Production" and "Publicity." Each is well laid out, easy to navigate (although some are video-based montages that you can only pause through) and robust - I counted well over 200 stills total. Oddly, however, there are no theatrical trailers included in the publicity section or anywhere else on the disc, aside from the usual Disney Sneak Peaks. Alas, no teasers, trailers or TV spots of any kind for Pirates of the Caribbean are provided.

DVD- ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in your PC?

At last! Some PC-enhanced extras that actually give us something to watch. One always expects the usual Buena Vista custom interface to pop up when you place a Disney disc in the drive, but this time we get more than just the usual weblinks and basic DVD controls. There is a top-notch assortment of extras here that make great use of the format's interactive capabilities.You know this one is going to be different just from the menu - if you select the "Enhanced Computer Features" option when you put the disc in a DVD-Video player, you don't just get a little text screen telling you to then put the disc in your computer. Instead, we are treated to a neat 1-minute promo spot giving us some visuals to entice us with what is to come. A great touch.

Let's start with the extra that is the most technically innovative if also the most slight, the Moonlight Becomes Ye Effects Studio. Similar to the morphing feature on the Terminator 2: Extreme Edition, you can input a jpeg or gif of yourself or a friend, and do some seriously damage to your face - or at least make it look like one of the undead pirates in the movie. (Want an example? Check out our Pirates of the Caribbean multimedia gallery for some screen and menu shots.)

The Disneyland Pirates Attraction Virtual Reality Viewer is essentially a souped-up image gallery: click through various stills of the new, retooled Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride, along with a little bit of introductory text. A cousin to this feature is the Pirates of the Caribbean Attraction Image Gallery, which is loaded with conceptual artwork and designs that went into the building and development of the new attraction. While not directly related to the making of the movie, I for one think this is an area where PC-enhanced features can excel - giving us both valuable insight into areas related to a movie's production and that enhance our enjoyment of it.

Perhaps my favorite features were the Script Scanner and Storyboard Viewer. Both are expertly designed: movement and control is fluid, and the simple but well thought-out layout allows quick access to specific scenes. You can also either read the script or view the storyboards in tandem with watching the film. It works beautifully, and is another example of how powerful well-executed PC-enhanced extras can be. You can also print out the entire script or specific scenes if desired.

Rounding out this fine set is the highly enjoyable featurette Dead Men Tell No Tales: The History of the Attraction. Who would have thought a cheesy little theme park ride would have such a rich backstory? It all makes one nostalgic for another trip to Disneyland. Is this shameless marketing, or great documentary-making? Watch and decide for yourself.

Parting Thoughts