Not so hot, but not bad enough to make me angry

Rating: 6/10 (27 May 2007)

I had to laugh when going to see this. It seemed like nobody was having much fun or anticipation going in to the theater. It was like people were going to see it out of some sort of duty. It had some good moments and bad moments and was wayyyy too long but at the end it was just like "Ehh" (shrug) and I couldn't even work up much feeling about it negative or positive. It's a Pirates movie. I do commend the filmmakers for being able to squeeze three reasonably (mildly?) entertaining movies out of the pirate genre. I thought they would be repeating themselves endlessly with old jokes but they managed to come up with cool pirate-y ideas they hadn't done before (Calypso goddess of the sea, a big whirlpool, the pirates' parliament, the swashbuckling wedding ceremony, etc) I give them some points for that. And every penny of the movie's undoubtedly obscene budget is clearly all up on the screen, with the sets, costumes and ships as elaborate as ever. Also, was that monkey CGI? If not, that has to go down as the Best Acting by a Monkey in the history of Hollywood. Loved the monkey.
But I really, really hate that they killed off some of the characters. It wasn't necessary. I liked these characters more than some of the others we were expected to care about (ie, Will and Bootstrap - who gives a crap?? And why did they introduce a new evil sidekick for the evil East India guy -- neither of whom are particularly interesting or really all that evil? Why was Norrington given a 2-second death scene while East India Guy got some ludicrously overblown slow-motion exit that went on forever?) I certainly don't want to see any more Pirates movies unless the ENTIRE cast returns. So Tia Dalma/Calypso better get cracking on a couple more miraculous resurrections of dead characters. Plus, Jack was just annoying in this movie. I guess they figured that if one Jack wasn't doing it any more, 20 Jacks would be better. And Keith Richards? HUGE disappointment. I thought he was going to be Jack on Steroids, not a barely recognizable guy who said very little.
The funny thing is that when I reviewed Dead Man's Chest I said I thought I might like 3 hours of it... well, I was wrong. 2 hours 45 minutes is just butt numbing torture and they only JUST provided enough interest this time around to keep me from walking out. It wasn't all that fast-paced a movie. They seemed very stingy with the actual thrills and action this time around. And the opening scenes in Sao Feng's lair are just flat and boring and talky... not a good way to start the movie.