PAGE A10, KEIZERTIMES, APRIL 2, 2021
Our
reviewer
says
The Lost
Pirate
Kingdom
is a mix
of genres
that fails
to gel.
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Netflix pirate doc is
(AAARRGH) painful
By TJ REID
For the Keizertimes
When the Disney World fi rst opened in
1971, there was one Disneyland attraction
that was conspicuously missing: Pirates of
the Caribbean. According to park lore, this
was done because it was initially believed
that Floridians would be less charmed
by pirates thanks to their proximity to
the Caribbean itself. This turned out to
be a miscalculation as one thing became
clearer over the years: that everyone loves
pirates. Disney World would get its Pirates
ride in 1973, and nearly fi ve decades later
it and its brethren in Anaheim, Paris, and
Shanghai remain some of the most popu-
lar attractions Disney has to off er. There
is something undeniably appealing about
the adventurous lifestyle that these rogues
lead, but who were they as people? What is
the truth behind the legends? Netfl ix’s new
docuseries The Lost Pirate Kingdom wants
desperately to give viewers these answers,
but just might end up making them sea-
sick instead thanks to its laughable reen-
actments, mind numbing repetitiveness,
and lack of good history.
An ugly hybrid between documen-
tary and historical drama, The Lost
Pirate Kingdom is an absolute chore.
The talking heads are periodically inter-
rupted here by bad actors in bad costumes
who try their darndest to conjure up the
high seas excitement of a Pirates of the
Caribbean fi lm, all the while accompa-
nied by a score that sounds like discount
Hans Zimmer. These reenactments are
not entertaining, nor are they necessary,
as everything the actors do and say is just
a repeat of what the historians themselves
said fi ve seconds before. And speaking of
unnecessary, this documentary is R-rated.
As in, there are multiple f-bombs and more
than one topless prostitute. Why? Because
this is Netfl ix, and our documentary is
going to be spicy, dammit! If The Lost
Review
Pirate Kingdom would have worried less
about being a gritty, low-budget Pirates of
the Caribbean movie then it would have
had more time to show some actual his-
torical depth, but as it is the information
conveyed is shockingly shallow. What was
the War of Spanish Succession and what
did it have to do with the rise of piracy
in the eighteenth century? Don’t worry
about it! Here’s a love scene between Sam
Bellamy and a woman that may have not
even existed!
This leads me to the other gripe that
I had with The Lost Pirate Kingdom —
the passing off of speculation and hearsay
as fact. If there is one thing I have learned
about the pirates of the Golden Age in
my reading throughout the years, it’s that
their history is often very diffi cult to nail
down because men like Blackbeard and
Benjamin Hornigold were not exactly the
diary-keeping types. Historians have to fi ll
in a lot of blanks, and this series does a
very poor job of acknowledging that. If
you do not have some prior knowledge of
these people and events already then it
will be impossible to know what is histori-
cal fact and what is historical speculation.
Skip this one and get your pirate fi x
elsewhere. I personally recommend The
Republic of Pirates: Being the True and
Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates
and the Man Who Brought Them Down by
Colin Woodard (who happened to be one
of the talking heads in this series). Here in
The Lost Pirate Kingdom, there be only
monsters.
The Lost Pirate Kingdom is now avail-
able on Netfl ix.