This movie's existence really takes away from Bart issues at school. The Simpsons where Bart was supposed to read Treasure Planet the way to Treasure Island. Cancel Planet the whole other thing and it's not going to be out for almost 10 years. Anyways board had to read this Treasure Book and he never did. So we just kind of made up the story and tried to get away on the skin of his teeth. He fails miserably and is threatened with having to repeat the fourth grade.
And all of this was brought about because he couldn't be bothered to read a very simple pirate book.
But with the movie existing, he could have sat down for 2 hours and just watch this instead.
He wouldn't have been able to pass with flying colours in his book report. But he probably would have been able to get away with it maintain a level with mediocrity.
Anyways as the title would implythis is a movie about Long John Silver. One of the most popular Pirates in all of them literary fiction.
Admittedly I've never read any of this pirate fiction, which means I'm in the exact same boat as Bart.
But I'm at least mildly aware of this character and his many exploits.
Including his adventures to Treasure Island.
Which apparently took place before this movie. I had not known this at the time when first watching this film, otherwise I would have started with that movie instead.
But as it is I'll just go with the punches and see what's going on here.
We have Robert Newton playing the titular Long John Silver. And doing a fairly enjoyable job of it. He acts with the stereotypical accent, he speaks with mannerisms that are utterly corny by every standard you could imagine.
You have this half drunken Pirate with limited Mobility; Constantly thinking of new schemes to get himself out of hot water and acquired a bunch of wealth from other greedy people.
One of which is this other Captain known as Capt. Mendoza who wears even more flamboyant clothing than Silver does.
He's played by Lloyd Berrell and his performance alongside Newton's makes for some of the most entertaining parts of the entire movie.
Honestly you could just have an entire film dedicated to these two in a cabin bouncing off of one another with different schemes and trickery and I think you'd still have a great flick.
So the story of the film goes like this.
Captain Long John Silver is sitting around in the middle of a bar, these two Pirates (who are making trouble) are trying to order themselves a drink.
Silver throws a knife at the 2 and demands they clean up the mess they caused earlier.
In doing so John discovers the two of them work for his rivals vessel and demands his crew to capture these idiots for interrogation.
They were able to escape, and John decides to pay the Governor of the local area a visit. Knowing that these guys along with Capt. Mendoza are somehow involved in this scheme involving a kidnapped daughter of said Governor.
They make their way into the Governor's estate by knocking out the guards and set up an entire scheme with said Governor to intercept the captain, rescue the kidnappy and plunder a bunch of gold that Capt. Mendoza was going to steal while blaming it on said Captain and getting away scot-free.
Along the way Captain John will discover a young lad working for Capt. Mendoza who he had known on a previous adventure and had given him a magical medallion that could reveal the location of a giant treasure trove from their Adventure at Treasure Island.
He wants to get sad Medallion but a bunch of external events keep preventing him.
At one point he has to tell the kids flat out that it's a revealer of Treasurer and then promises to give him a chunk of treasure if he comes along.
This is made more difficult because the kid is supposed to go back to England to get a proper education.
There's a whole thing where Captain John ''accommodates'' the kid and heads down on a boat in search of this adventure. There's this weird subplot involving a woman that wants to marry silver and it's at this point that I started losing interest in the movie.
It's not even that it's all that bad I just find myself dis-interested in what's going on at the moment.
So I'll have to come back to it later on.
I never realized how much of the Pirates of the Caribbean was based off this particular story. Everything from character Dynamics, down to a Magic Medallion. It's all a basic Long John Silver story and somehow they alternated with an eccentric Johnny Depp's and zombie Pirates.
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