Plot just too loose

Rating: 4/10 (23 June 2007)

I guess I like some sort of logic to a plot, and the threads here were not only tangled and numerous, but somewhat tenuous too. Pull too hard (i.e. actually think about what you are seeing) and the whole thing unravels to about halfway. I have just come out of seeing the whole film (so long that the cinema gave everyone a 10 minute 'health break' at a completely arbitrary point approximately halfway through - the screen just went black!) so what follows are fresh impressions ..
Somewhat surreal .. and that can be fine, but here it was surreal just for the sake of being surreal. For example, rocks/crabs that turn into a makeshift crab-conveyor belt for Cap'n Jack's ship .. OK, but how exactly do these fit in? Or the Cap'n Jack doppelgangers?
The whole 'pirates are good' 'pirates are free' thing grated after a while. That Shipwreck cove for the pirates 'convention' looked like a giant Xmas tree, and then like some giant Elven forest tree decked out with lights .. all too nice and civilised.
And on that sort of point, the 'English are bad' 'English are evil' thing also started to grate. And how on earth did the East India Company muster up an armada of hundreds of ships?
Also just odd in my view is how Davy Jones is so under the thumb of Lord Becket (?) The best Davy Jones (yes DAVY JONES) can do now is knock a tea cup out of Will Turner's hand. Yes, I know Becket has his heart and all that, but the fact that DJ has been rendered impotent really does not sit well with his being the tyrant overlord of souls condemned to the locker.
I had hoped for more from Calypso .. I was waiting for a large sea-serpenty Calypso to emerge from the vortex of the whirlpool but my wait was in vain
The problem is that these gripes just mount up and undermine the cohesion of the film .. there just is no good solid story here. It is like sitting down for dinner and being served various kinds of desserts one after another, at least from after half ways through the movie, and up to that point there were only appetisers.
The special effects were fine but I wouldn't see the movie for the special effects (I remember fish people, a short clip of a giant Calypso, and ships duelling it out in a giant whirl pool)
Johnny Depp was pretty good, though had less to work with than in the previous films I thought. Keira K is always nice to watch, but again a caveat .. the film tended towards Politically Correct girls-lead-boys girls-trash-boys stuff towards the end.
Ah well. Somewhat disappointed, having seen the previous two.