I finally saw Cutthroat Island (1995), all 2+ hours of it. I've been a fan of pirates forever now, and went to see all the bad 1980s pirate movies, Yellowbeard, Pirates, The Pirates Movie, ... This is sort of the last entry (1995 is very late 80s), and I guess I had wised up by this time.
It starts with a sexy little sex piece, introducing us to Geena Davis as pirate Morgan Adams and her monkey sidekick. Then she goes to rescue her pirate father from her pirate uncle. Each has a one-third piece of the treasure map to Cutthroat Island. They escape, but her father dies. Since his part of the map is tattooed on his head, she scalps him, but finds that the map is in Latin. To find a Latin scholar, they go to the slave market, where they purchase talented scoundrel Matthew Modine.
And so Davis and Modine set out to find the other two-thirds of the map while being chased by her uncles. We get sword fights, sea battles, storms and shipwrecks, mutinies and every other thing you can think of in a pirate movie. But a smart script and some direction might have been nice. We get olde-timey dialog, spoken in dead California accents. We get incongruous humorous quips, falling like lead balloons. And that's the big problem.
The action is done quite well - this is directed by Renny Harlin, who is pretty good at that. We see Davis doing her own stunts a lot. She doesn't look that great doing them, but points for effort. We get great practical effects, what looks like a real ship or three, and some nice miniatures. All these are things we love. But as soon as someone opens their mouth, oof.
I don't think that Davis is the problem. It's her husband, Rennie Harlin, a very mixed director who did much better with her next movie, The Long Kiss Goodnight.
In conclusion, this pretty much killed the pirate movie until Depp put on eye shadow.
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