YELLOWBEARD - DVD review

Harrrrrr.

Make that, Harrrrr de harr harr.

Pirate films have long been ripe for a good spoof, and some of the Monty Python boys gave it a go in 1983 with "Yellowbeard." That same year, you may recall, the full Python troupe released "The Meaning of Life," in which bored cubicle people in an office hi-rise mutiny and take over the building that morphs into a ship. So pirates were on Graham Chapman's and John Cleese's minds back then. What I'd like to know is, why didn't the rest of them join the two main Python handlers in this satire of the Spanish Main?

Maybe Chapman and Cleese wanted to commandeer their own comedy ship and launch a separate attack. If so, they shanghaied one heck of a comic cast, including Peter Boyle, Kenneth Mars and Marty Feldman ("Young Frankenstein"), Madeline Kahn ("Blazing Saddles"), Peter Cook ("Saturday Night Live"), and Cheech & Chong (their own world). But the high-powered cast seems almost underutilized in a film that steers a surprisingly straight course at times. Cheech & Chong appear only briefly (if you blink, you'll miss them), so don't let their billboard-sized heads on the cover art lead you to think this is their movie. Maybe it should have been, because the two of them are hilarious in their limited space. But the narrative is much more on-compass I would have thought, and maybe that's why the full troupe didn't sign on.

The pirating action is as realistic as you'll see in any buccaneer film—even more so, because you see the tip of a sword come out the back of a sailor instead of the usual side shot where you know the blade is between the body and arm. And though the plot isn't exactly the same, "Yellowbeard" owes one heck of a debt to "Treasure Island." There's the tavern, the boy (in this case, Martin Hewitt as the 20 year old that Yellowbeard is told is his son), the blind man (here, Cleese as Harvey "Blind" Pew), the old pirate (Chapman as Yellowbeard) and the expedition to recover the pirate's old treasure. The scenes that most resemble ones from the Robert Louis Stevenson classic are perhaps not coincidentally the most reverently adventure-oriented. It's as if Chapman and Cleese couldn't decide whether to go for laughs or homage.

There are some laughs here, but feminists beware: some of the funniest lines have to do with rape and mistreatment of women.

Betty: "Well, it's been awhile since he had a little cuddle."
Yellowbeard: "I raped ya, if that's what you mean."

Yellowbeard: "I'm sure I killed the last one I raped, it can't have been you."
Betty: "Well, the afterplay was a bit on the rough side, but not fatal, dear."

Yellowbeard: "Where's the map?"
Betty: "What map?"
Yellowbeard: "If you say you don't know where it is, I'll nail your tits to the table.

Betty: "That's Yellowbeard."
Yellowbeard: I'm in disguise, you stupid tart!"

The action begins with a flashback to establish how Yellowbeard got his treasure, and then it's fast-forward 20 years to a prison where the brigand is about to be released. One release/escape later (it's hard to tell which), and Yellowbeard heads back to the tavern to get his map. It turns out that while son Dan doesn't have the heart of the pirate, at least he has the head for it. Mother Betty (Kahn) tattooed the map on his noggin when he was born. So with former first mate Moon (Boyle) and former prison mate Gilbert (Feldman) lurking in the wings, the Chapman-Cleese "Treasure Island" gang hires on as crew members serving under Capt. Hughes (James Mason), who has an interesting relationship with a sailor named Mr. Prostitute. They bide their time waiting for just the right moment, and the curious thing is, so do we. We wait, sometimes for more jokes, sometimes for more action, while the film veers back and forth. In the meantime, Chapman as Yellowbeard thankfully sustains us with a mesmerizing performance, as does Kahn whenever she's on-camera. There just aren't enough laughs.

Video: Presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1), this print of "Yellowbeard" has visible dirt and other imperfections that appear as specks and flickers, though it's advertised as being remastered in High Definition. There's also considerable graininess throughout. This isn't a film that got painstaking care, either in the preservation or in the transfer. It's not horrible, but it's far from great.

Audio: The audio is a simple English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. Serviceable, no frills, nothing distinctive, but also nothing horrendous, when the sound could have been quite so at sea.

Extras: There are no extras.

Bottom Line: "Yellowbeard" has one foot on the dock and one foot on the ship, but it's the viewer who's the most uncomfortable with that split. It could have been funnier, and it could have been more adventurous. But it's "Yellowbeard," and ultimately that's a film that has bright moments but a much brighter potential that remains unfulfilled.