PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN RATING THE MOVIE - THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL

Pirate pictures are poison. Yellowbeard, Pirates, CutThroat Island - all sank to the bottom of the box office, weighed down with critical bile.

Factor in Gore Verbinski's workmanlike reputation and a theme park ride for source material and Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl (deep breath) looks as attractive as the Elephant man.

So, brace the mainsail and shiver those timbers, etc, for this is a superb swashbuckler - rousing, funny and spectacular.

"This is either madness or brilliance," says Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), as he and Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) attempt to steal a ship and rescue the governor's daughter (Keira Knightley). The statement could easily be ascribed to Depp's eccentric, ecstatic performance, and as the singular skipper replies, "It's remarkable how often those two traits coincide."

Depp simply steals the show, lock, stock and two floating barrels. Foppish, fey and hilarious, Sparrow is a brilliant creation - a self-publicising rogue with the élan of Douglas Fairbanks and the demeanour of an acid casualty.

Faced with his scene-snaffling, the others do well to register. Bloom has a Flynn-ish quality (if a touch goodie goodie) as Knightley's squeeze, while the young British actress (Bend It Like Beckham) appears effortlessly charismatic.

Marginally less photogenic, Geoffrey Rush is no less impressive as the villainous Captain Barbossa, questing to lift the curse on the crew of the notorious Black Pearl.

His dialogue is gloriously grandiose ("Compelled by greed we were and now we are consumed by it!"), but always underscored by the wit you'd expect from the writers of Shrek and The Mask Of Zorro.

The latter is a stylistic touchstone for this story of seabound skulduggery - which matches its playful tone, splendid swordfights and cheerful disposability. And while Pirates may be as overlong as its franchise-minded title, the characters are so engaging, the action so entertaining, you won't really care. Yo ho ho, indeed.

Johnny Depp has come a long way from 21 Jump Street - the US TV show which lumbered him with teen idol status. Since then he's worked with director Tim Burton on numerous occasions - their most recent collaboration being "Sleepy Hollow". Depp has also worked with oddball helmer Terry Gilliam for "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", and famously dragged it up for "Ed Wood". It's all helped mould his quirky persona, as well as earning him a reputation as one of America's finest young character actors. While still demonstrating that offbeat air, swashbuckling adventure "Pirates of the Caribbean" is perhaps his most 'mainstream' film to date.

You based your character on Rolling Stone Keith Richards. Why's that?

I thought of Keith because he's a guy I've admired for many, many years. I didn't want to do an imitation of Keith, or a character study, just a kind of salute to him, you know, to show him I appreciate him. I was thinking about the pirates of the 18th century, about how they were the rocks stars of their day. So I thought: Who's the greatest rock and roll star who ever lived? And to me, it's Keith Richards hands down. Keith is a bit of a pirate himself!

What was it like to have Geoffrey Rush play your nemesis?

He was great fun. It's always a worry when you go into a film and you don't know someone. You worry that he won't have a sense of humour, that he'll be really intense about his work. But Geoffrey's nuts! He has a great sense of humour.

There's obviously a lot of swordplay in the movie. How tough was that to learn?

That was very intense, actually. Probably the most intense part of pre-production and the production itself was the sword fighting. We had these fantastic sword masters who took us through our moves and forced us to work. Which was a good thing, because losing a finger or losing an eye was always a possibility.

What about the gold teeth? You've still got them...

Well, there's a little gold and a little platinum. It didn't go over very well with the Disney executives actually. Initially, they were a little freaked out about it.