Summer movies tend to break down into two different categories. One type is the Michael Bay type of movie where bad guys get blood and brains blown out of them while the good guys run through the streets carrying two pistols in slow motion. Then there is the other type of summer movie, where the bad guys get disposed of in a nice and clean, audience friendly way by a hero who swings from the rafters with a sword in his/her hand.

To put one down over the other would be a blanket generalization of the whole action movie genre. But it doesn't take a brain scientist to see the difference in a piece of artful and skillful cinema like "Raiders of the Lost Arc," and "Pirates of the Carribean" to other bad guy shoot em ups like "Bad Boys 2" or "The Rock." Both can be fun.

I guess one thing that makes this summer so interesting is that the two prototypical summer movies that fill each subset of the action genre, "Pirates" and "BB 2," were both produced by famed action producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

"Pirates of the Carribean" is just one of those really fun movies that stand shoulder to shoulder with anything Spielberg or Lucas has every put out. With "Raiders" being the benchmark of what a great summer adventure movie can be and "The Mummy Returns" being the benchmark of how bad a summer adventure movie can be, "Pirates of the Carribean" lies almost right in the middle with a slight leaning towards the Indiana Jones movies.

If action movies aren't your cup of tea, then the movie would be worth the price of admission just in seeing Johnny Depp's performance as Captain Jack Sparrow. Johnny Depp gets my vote as being one of the great actors of all time. It's odd that someone who looks as obviously gorgeous as Johnny Depp does, would continue to play people in movies who are so visibly ugly and reserved. From "Edward Scissorhands" to "Pirates" to "Ed Wood", Johnny Depp has made a career out of not taking the easy way out. It probably would have been really easy for Johnny Depp to take the Ben Affleck approach of picking out the next action movie to star in. But Depp has instead flourished and made a nice little niche for himself playing emotionally and physically complex characters. Sadly, the Academy Awards does not give Oscars to roles such as Johnny Depp's "Captain Jack Sparrow," but right now he'd get my vote as the Best Supporting Actor of the year. He literally steals every scene that he's in.

On a tangent, Johnny Depp confessed to never having watched a Pirate movie before, so he came to the conclusion that pirates were essentially the movie star, rebels without a cause of their day. The best way to describe Jack Sparrow as Johnny Depp played him would be to think of Keith Richards mixed in with a little Jimi Hendrix and some Bob Marley for good measure. That's Jack Sparrow in this movie.

Another interesting thing about this movie is that there is yet another instance of Lucas getting schooled by another director in actors and actresses that would have been better than the people he chose for his prequels. Keira Knightley plays the requisite damsel in distress and in nearly every scene, she comes off as completely bitchy. But not in the really annoying, Jennifer Lopez way, but more in the cool to be bitchy, Carrie Fisher circa 1977 way. The whole time I watched 'Pirates' I kept asking myself why Lucas didn't pick her to play Leia's mom. She EXUDES all the same attributes that Carrie Fisher displayed in the first two SW movies. Bitchy to not so bitchy to falling in love to ultimate heroine.

Orlando Bloom was just fine in his role as the swashbuckling hero. There really wasn't much for him to work with. His physicality was able to carry him through the role, but there really wasn't much there in way of his acting. He's basically playing the same type of role he played in the Lord of the Rings movies.

In different hands, the character of Barbossa would have been a complete and utter joke. It would have been a cariacature of every bad pirate movie ever made. But in Geoffery Rush's hands, Barbossa was a pure delight. Depp stole the show, but Rush grounded it. Depp and Bloom's characters were pretty straightforward. Barbossa was a pretty complex character to play. He's a bad pirate which means that he has to be pretty low down type of guy. But when it comes down to it, all Barbossa wants to do is eat a friggin apple. It sounds cheesy. But after watching the movie, it'll make a lot more sense.

The cinematography and directing were pretty top notch. Gore Verbinski is really good at creating different types of moods with natural and unnatural environments. It must have been incredibly difficult to create a whole entire movie based off of one of the more antiquated Disney rides. But they managed to create this whole story and world of both bad and good pirates. At times it felt like I was literally stuck in the ride itself. You know that cool blue and green water that theme parks use in their water rides, it felt like the whole movie was that. It's that mysterious blue and green shit that most people talk about after the ride. That's the movie in a nutshell.

Before closing I'll add that if you are familiar with the ride, you'll have a lot of different characters from the ride to look at. You can almost hear the animatronic, hydraulic gears beneath the actors.

Bottom line: GREAT summer movie. As far as modern day swashbucklers, second only to "The Mask of Zorro."