The Best Summer Movie Ever Is ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’

To understand why Curse of the Black Pearl was the perfect summer movie, we need to get at the heart of what a “summer movie” really is.

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It’s Debate Week. This article is one of sixteen arguments competing for the prize of being named ‘Best Summer Movie Ever.’ Read the rest throughout the week here.

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The way I see it, when we’re talking about picking the “best summer movie,” we’re not talking about simply the best film released in the summertime— if that was the question, this would just be a matter of making a list of the best of all time and then filtering by release date, which would be tragically boring — but the film most noteworthy for its uniquely summer-esque qualities.

To me, an ideal summer movie should be the cinematic equivalent of those emblematic summer snacks — popsicles, lemonade, cotton candy eaten at a carnival — that is, it should be fun, colorful, cloying enough to rot your teeth, and have minimal nutritional value. Which brings me to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. It’s about fifty minutes longer than necessary, decidedly dumb, over the top in just about every way imaginable, and so. Much. Fun.

Let me acknowledge one simple fact from the get-go: this film is braindead. That’s part of the charm. It’s like a big, dumb, lovable puppy in movie form — two hours and twenty minutes featuring approximately zero seconds of intellectual stimulation.

And you know what, that is absolutely A-okay. Your brain works hard, it deserves a break sometimes, and as far as being intelligent, thinking beings, watching The Curse of the Black Pearl definitely qualifies as “taking a break.”

Creating truly entertaining dumb content is actually an elusive and ephemeral art. The line between fun-dumb and just-plain-dumb is nigh impossible to define or verbalize, though the difference in viewing experience is night and day, and relatively few films manage to succeed in being entertainingly dumb instead of falling into the territory of painfully stupid. I am no sequel apologist—as far as I’m concerned, all of the installments after Black Pearl can walk the plank—but on the first try, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise manages to hit the bullseye of dumb fun.

It’s got everything you could ever want from mindless entertainment. Extravagantly choreographed swashbuckling and sword fights that defy the laws of physics. Harebrained schemes and daring rescues. Bold declarations of love and doe-eyed pining. One-liners about corsets and really cool hats. Jonathan Pryce fighting a disembodied zombie pirate arm over a wig. And yes, you might lose a few brain cells in the viewing process, but you know what, they died happy.

Summer is the season of happily wasting time—the time for sunbathing and lazy afternoons, the part of the year where students gladly forget a sizable portion of the information teachers spent all the other parts of the year drilling into their brains. In naming a “Best Summer Movie,” we should pick a title that truly reflects a season defined by warmth and sun and the kinds of fun that don’t involve thinking too much. For both its strengths and what its critics would call weaknesses, The Curse of the Black Pearl is exactly such a film.

But to really drive home my case, let me double down on some of The Curse of the Black Pearl‘s defining features.

The Score

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