At Wit's End

Rating: 5/10 (28 December 2009)

The first Pirates of the Caribbean film, The Curse of the Black Pearl, was a great bit of fun. It was a pirate film, pretty rare at that time, and it had a bit of everything enjoyable in it: romance, humor, great characters (except, oddly enough, for the two romantic leads), and a few chills. It was a fun watch, and deservedly a huge hit.
The second film, Dead Man's Chest, was still pretty cool. The Davy Jones subplot brought a lot more story to the film, which weighed it down a bit, but overall it was still a fun watch. The humor was certainly still there, and Johnny Depp continued to shine as Jack Sparrow. Plus, there were some very memorable scenes and visuals, like the fishy crew of the Flying Dutchman.
This review, though, is about the third film, At World's End. The third film in a trilogy has the major task of bringing closure to the story lines that have been introduced throughout the series while still leaving open the possibility for another film in case the filmmakers decide to go for a quadrilogy. Sadly, it is my belief that At World's End did not do this in a satisfactory way.
It may have been due to the fact that I hadn't seen Dead Man's Chest in a couple years and kind of lost the story. It may have been because I was watching it on TV, where it was frequently interrupted by commercials and possibly edited down for time. However, to me, it seemed that At World's End was kind of a messy film. By this point, there was soooo much story that the whole endeavor seemed to have been weighed down with the effort of dealing with so many plot lines. To me, it seemed that this was a failed attempt to bring an epic scope to the Pirates of the Caribbean series. Instead of feeling grand, it just got really muddled.
This is mostly due to the many dealings with the politics of the pirate world. Trades and alliances and power struggles...this was touched on in the first film, but it never got in the way of the main story. Here, it felt like these elements of the story took up too much time, and they definitely dragged the film down.
Even with those elements aside, we still had so much to juggle: Davy Jones/the Flying Dutchman; Bootstrap Bill and Will; Elizabeth's ascension through the ranks of piracy; Calypso's release; the various anti-pirate Englishmen whose names I now fail to remember...I'm all for complex, rich films, but by the end of this one, my brain hurt pretty badly. These elements were all thrown at us hard and fast, which made the film pretty messy in the end.
On the positive side, the special effects were still wonderful. Also, there were some pretty cool fight scenes, which helped to keep the film from completely becoming bogged down in itself. By the same token, the wedding of Will and Elizabeth was pretty cool, though, according to the final scene, it appears that their married life won't quite be what they were expecting...
On the whole, though, this convoluted film was the weakest of the entire Pirates series. And, help us all, they're making a fourth one...I think I'm all pirated out now.