This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 11:42 am and is filed under Action, Action/Comedy, P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Director: Gore Verbinski
Starring: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Kiera Knightly, Geoffrey Rush, Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander
Hmmm, here’s an idea. Let’s make a sequel to a story primarily driven by a single character, and then not even put that character on screen for the first 45 minutes. After that, lets bury this charismatic star in a pile of mediocre ‘pirates’ and add a convoluted plot that cuts into the action that made the first Pirates movies popular in their niche. This movie is a mess. The first two chapters in this series were action orgies, carried by powerhouse performances by Depp’s colorful self-created character. This sequel wants to tell every character’s story, but even in this three-hour marathon, there is not enough time (or interest) to go around. It is slow-starting, action-challenged and is still saddled with Orlando Bland, who has the screen presence of a dish rag, and Kiera Whosely, who is as special as your average Tuesday afternoon and whose Swann character is only slightly better.
Well, Barbossa (Rush), Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Swann (Knightly) feel they have to get Capt. Jack (Depp) back to help a proposed pirate alliance (and save their quickly sinking film) to stand against Lord Cutler Beckett who now has Davy Jones under his control. All of these characters, and others, have their own agendas and it is hard to follow the motivations and shifting alliances. The ending seems to be setting up for yet another sequel. Lord, Jesus, let me be wrong; just this once.
I didn’t particularly care for the first two movies in this series (can you tell?). The action scenes were overdone and Depp had to carry the films, but they made plenty of treasure, so another one was made. By this third release, Verbinski drifted from the successful seas of the series to dead waters and then furiously tried to paddle back to lucrative territory. Even fans of the series will find this one noticeably weaker, and those forced to go because of a tasteless partner, or an agreement to review every crap movie that comes out, will find it to be a near-intolerable, three hour irritation session.
