Kids in London – Pirates of the Caribbean III in Leicester Square

;) My nine year old loves the cinema. She also loves Pirates of the Caribbean (although I lay claim to having been a fan from the original ride in EuroDisney days which inspired the films many years later). So going up to London, rather than visiting our local cinemas in Richmond and Kingston, seemed an obvious choice.

I fitted in a quick meeting in Holborn while she pottered around Covent Garden with some of my friends. They were well entertained with a juggling mono-cyclist with a good line in patter and some rather dirty underpants. We walked along Long Acre and entered a bustling Leicester Square although it was only a Thursday night. We were a bit surprised to learn that the show started at 845pm – and as it’s a long film – the finish time was billed as 1130pm. We checked with the helpful London Transport staff that the tubes would still be running to get us home at that time and also that our car would be safe in the car park til that time in Osterley (answers – “Yes” to the tubes still running and “hopefully” to the car park issue – as it turned out, everything WAS fine).

So, with a little time to kill we looked for a place where we could have supper. With a vegetarian and a genuine non-pirate from the Caribbean who wanted spicy food and a picky nine year old, we were a bit concerned about finding something that would suit everyone. Burgershack came up trumps with Cajan burger and chicken dishes, some rather good falafel burgers and ribs. Remember to order fries and sides separately. Mind you, £46 for three adults and a child with only one drink each seemed a bit steep (compared to the excellent food served in the Gournet Burger chain) but I guess they have a captured market in a prime location. Anyway, the black and white photos on the walls provided us with a good guessing game while we waited for the food to arrive. And they were quick.

The film took a while to get going and there was quite a lot of rather confusing scenes where Mr Depp – although we love him dearly – seemed to go off into a bit of a self-flirt. But the third pirates movie had awesome special effects – although in some scenes there was so much happening that we probably missed loads too. The maelstrom scenes were incredible – and we wondered how they filmed that bit. The scenes in Hong Kong were fabulous but the breath-taking scenery in Dominica made it really special. Not sure we liked the idea of a female Pirate King though – even though Keira is lovely. I am of the view that the first Pirates film was the best but the others in the party really liked this one too.

However, we all felt that at nearly three hours long it really was just too much. It’s unlikely that kids younger than eight or nine will sit through it.