Messy, messy, messy....

Rating: 6/10 (20 June 2007)

Arr, Cap'n, here be some good stuff - nearly an hour and a half worth of quality swashbuckling, laugh-out-loud one-liners, brilliant costumes, exotic sets and a scene-stealing cutesy monkey.

Arrrrr, then, Jim Lad, well, why be ye givin' this movie only a six out of ten?

..... errrrr..... because this self-indulgent, bloated, bladder-burster of a TOTAL disappointing sequel weighs in with a running time of just under THREE HOURS, Cap'n? Which means that, arr, yes there *do* be good stuff here, but it's often marooned in the doldrums of lack of plot/direction/motivation, or at other points shipwrecked cruelly on the deadly rocks of "too many ideas, too much going on, not a lot of sense to be made of it all, just a great big bl**dy mess" for just over half of its running time? If you do go see this in the cinema, take a tip from the good Cap'n Jack Sparrow and make sure you drink a lot of rum in preparation. It will numb you to the sheer atrocious disappointment of what *could* have been -with this cast and this budget, and the basic cheeky charm of the original POTC concept - and there's also a very great chance that the lurching "so convoluted that you no longer even blinkin' CARE" plot line may actually make more sense when you're good and roundly drunk.
Solid performances from all the cast - particularly Geoffrey Rush and Bill Nighy - still can't salvage this almighty mess.