I didn't know what this movie thought it was, and i don't even think it did.

Rating: 4/10 (16 June 2007)

My friends organised a trip to the movies to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Now i remembered mildly enjoying the first one at home and being underwhelmed whilst half-watching the second one at a friends house, so i wasn't exactly thrilled at the prospect of having to sit through this, but i felt it would be best to be sociable.
So anyway, i sat through it and even though my eyes were drooping for the last 30 minutes (seriously) i managed to get the impression that whoever organised the production of the latest POTC had absolutely no idea what they were doing.
Firstly, the general genre and feeling of the movie was completely mixed up and contradicted itself on several occasions. It portrayed itself as a fantasy/adventure laced with (poor) humour. Yet after setting this tone for a good while the last third of the movie in my opinion basically becomes some warped form of Mel Gibson's Braveheart. This all starts when Keira Knightley goes and delivers a god awful 'rousing' speech, which i strongly suspect was derived from Gibson's in Braveheart and it was done quite laughably. And i thought this just completely crippled the movie from then on, throwing the audience off the scent of any kind of finale.
Secondly, the acting skills of Keira Knightley were cringe worthy, as i have said that badly written Braveheart parody made me want the ground to swallow me up. Keira was basically screeching (did anyone else notice how funny her voice sounded when she was shouting?) for two minutes, demonstrating her ineptitude to time her lines into an emotional crescendo and in the end she just went down like a lead balloon.
Thirdly, the humour was unoriginal and predictable, the only thing which made me laugh was when the two pirates were looking up Keira Knightleys skirt through the crack in the floor and in reflection even that wasn't funny. Also, the Calypso segment further convoluted the plot into a mess of story lines i for one failed to grasp.
Finally, i must once again go back to the similarities i felt this film shared with Braveheart, for some reason it just struck me as a complete rip off of the 1995 epic from the last battle on, almost shadowing it in the battle scene. Examples include, the final battle where when the two sides line up across the sea, the 'enemy' side vastly outnumbering the side we want to win by at least 3-1 as it does in Braveheart. Another is where the leaders of the opposing armies meet in the middle to negotiate and no resolution is found making battle inevitable.
On the positive side Johnny Depp gave a relatively good performance and worked well with what he had as a script and some of the action scenes were visually impressive.
All in all, a poor effort and i hope this vastly overrated film series ends now.
4/10