What are the problems with this movie?

Bombed big time..

Casting, casting and casting.

This movie had ONE decent actor in a leading role, and that was Frank Langella as Dog. Geena Davis absolutely SUCKED, she looked like she was cold reading most of her lines, and Matthew Modine was so white bread in this role that no amount of suspension of disbelief could make him work in the role. Pay attention to Davis's line deliveries, she sounds weak, tired and out of breath.

Aside from the miscast actors, I still think this is a great pirate movie; it has plenty of action, unbelievable stunt work, and absolutely gorgeous scenery and backdrops.

This movie could have been a great commercial success with some obvious cast changes.

John Debney's Score is one of the best of all time! I liked the movie even with its said flaws. Let's face it, the movie was a fun ride and as far as Pirate movies go it wasn't that bad. I loved Pirates Of The Caribbean and I really love Debney's score in comparison. As a student of Film Music it doesn't get any better that this! (Including my much loved Danny Elfman)

Ulysses Everett McGill: Well I don't want FOP, godammit! I'm a Dapper Dan man!

Two factors: wrong leads and stupid use of budget.

Davis was too mild as a tough pirate B*tch and Modine was too mild all to gether. I recall the original male lead was supposed to be Michael Douglas. Now that would have been a lot better choice, but sadly he refused to honors. I remember reading, that there was some jealosy between Harlin and Douglas because of Davis, but that's just silly tabloid rumors and we all know how credible those are.

The budget sillyness can be gathered from those four full scale pirate ships that were build, or at least that's what I've heard, for this film. And exploded. They could have used models for that.

I have to agree that casting was the problem with this fliq.
However I don't think that Davis was the problem. "Long Kiss Goodnight" shows that she could handle this kind of action fliq.

I've always thought that the problem was Modine (though I've loved him in other roles). He just wasn't right for the role & didn't give Davis enough to work with.

This could have been a really fun movie with a diff. cast - unfortunately as is, it just doesn't work.

i havnt seen it since theatre but i really dont remember it being so crappy, critics are very stupid people and can destroy anything they want, i normally will go see anything critics hate, i dont know why people need to have a $20 million movie star to make a movie good, i would much rather see no name actors, it makes the movie more believable, cant stand most of hollyweird

I remember seeing the movie when it came out, and disliking it. I had expected to like it, but found Geena Davis awkward as a pirate. Her performance seemed forced.

The other pirates would do whatever she told them, and I couldn't understand why. She didn't seem to have done anything to have a bunch of tough cutthroats in fear of her; it was obviously just in the script.

After reading much about the shortcomings of the script, I finally broke down and saw the movie last night.

The script definitely had problems, but many of them were fixable, such as the over emphasis on the Morgan character, which was never really believable as filmed.

What was not fixable was the horrible direction of the action sequences. The director seems to have followed two rules. One, the faster the action in real life, the slower the motion on the screen. On the other hand, maybe this was just a way of stretching a 90 minute movie to feature length.

Two, when in doubt, throw in another explosion. There wasn't enough gunpowder in the entire Caribbean to account for everything that blew up in this movie. At times, I thought it was filmed inside a live volcano.

On the various ships, the action was very static, giving the feeling of being shot on a set, and not on a ship. Also, when the leads were involved in action, all of the action around them was frozen so that we, the dumb audience, would be sure to pick them out.

All in all, the action sequences were generally terrible. While good action might salvage an indifferent script, bad action sequences can kill even a good script (which this was not).

I think the direction was the kiss of death to this project.