Yellowbeard

The best way to approach it is not as a comedy but as a straight pirate movie with exceedingly odd twists. Certainly it makes better use of its sterling actors than The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978), also co-written by and co-starring Cook, made of its sultans-of-comedy cast. [30 Jun 2006, p.R25]

There are about as many laughs in the film's 101 minutes as in a three-minute sketch by the Monty Python troupe, from which much of the cast hails.

What Yellowbeard establishes is that for even the funniest of performers, a good script may be as essential as pitching is to baseball.

Yellowbeard is a puzzlement. How could so many comedic talents produce such a mirthless movie? [27 Jun 1983]

There's a funny line or two, a fetching performance by Stacey Nelkin as a young wench, some nonsense about a buried treasure, and then Yellowbeard is soon over and soon forgotten.

Do you want to laugh already? Then laugh now, before you see this dispiritingly unfunny pirate movie. Later, it's difficult. Very brief moments only, I'm afraid. [25 Sep 1983, p.19]

The script, for which Chapman and Cook must bear some responsibility, is a three-minute Python skit bloated out to feature length, involving buried treasure, revenge, and machinations close to the throne. Depressing stuff.