Worse Case of Sequelitis Ever Contracted

Rating: 2/10 (26 May 2007)

I might as well have watched Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, Johnny Depp and Jerry Bruckheimer throw 300,000 ten dollar bills in a flaming barrel.
This film is the most incomprehensible blither that I have ever seen produced by a major studio. For some reason that escapes me, the filmmakers seem to think that ramping complexity equates story, which isn't true. The plotting, which would have embarrassed me in a video game, seemed to have been written by a down-syndrome twelve year old hopped up on caffeine at two in the morning. It managed the somewhat rare feat of being not only stupid, but insanely complex: at one point, I think that Johnny Depp manages to double cross HIMSELF. There are so many alliances made and broken (in one seen, there is a QUADRUPLE cross; you can actually try to keep track if you wish, but you could also just bash your heads against a wall for all the reward you'll get). For some reason, the producers felt that making the film INCOMPREHENSIBLY complicated would make the film SMART, which simply isn't true.
But at least, I thought, I'd sit through it for the effects, but the action sequences are too slick, too staged, and too illogical to be fun. While the second had the kraken and the escape from the island, all of the action sequences in the third are uninspired and forced, in a Disney sort of way. And, like the rest of the film, they're unnecessarily complicated. Insult is added to injury in that you're forced to sit through a number of "inspiring" speeches beforehand, including that most essential and contemporary element of modern blockbusters: the "they can't take our freedom!" scene.
Unsubtle yet confusing, uninteresting yet bloated, this is the worst kind of big Hollywood drivel: trash that thinks it is something more, or at least tries to convince us of it. How insulting.