Pirates III: how NOT to make a trilogy

Rating: 5/10 (24 May 2007)

And so it is proved, once again, that making a good trilogy isn't easy.
Sure, they did a good job in further repeating the now already 'typical pirates humor', portraying Sparrow as the somewhat clumsy yet always charming captain and, well, once again Keira was there to please the male eye. All of this probably because they hoped that this way we wouldn't notice that pirates III actually has... well... no story to it.
The same thing we saw happening with The Matrix: first movie is new, original and has a little something for everyone, in the second one they re-use the story, but add just a little twist and cover it all up with good visual effects. And come the third one, they've got no story left to tell and set the bar so high for themselves it's nearly impossible to reach it anymore, so they just fall back on the old reliable 'success of the other two movies'.
One thing I actually did like were the visual effects, and the amount of detail found in every single scene. That obviously took a lot of time and effort. Too bad that after seeing an army of undead pirates walking on the bottom of the ocean in the first movie, and a whole crew of half-man-half-sea-creatures in the second one, expectations were so high I was bound to being disappointed.
Yeah, nice locations too, again very detailed and everything, but I'm almost sorry I even noticed that, for my intentions were actually to follow the story (you know, tie all those loose ends Pirates I and II left us with) but all I heard coming out of the actor's mouths was "blablabla *insert typical Jack Sparrow quote here* blabla" As for the action scenes I can be quite brief: the first two movies they almost had me believing it just might even be possible (the three-man-fight on the big wheel in Pirates II not included), but this time they obviously got carried away. Even a child who 'wants to be a pirate when he grows up, just like captain Sparrow' will go out to find a more credible role model after seeing this movie.
All in all, I rated the movie 5 out of 10. They put a lot of work into the visual aspect of it all, but failed to live up to all the rest of my expectations.