A rapidly sinking series...

Rating: 3/10 (26 October 2008)

The first "Pirates" was an excellent movie. A near-perfect adventure film. The second was a bit heavy on special effects, but still enjoyable and memorable. Along comes "At World's End" and it seems things have gone downhill rapidly. Here are the reasons to avoid this film:
OVERUSE OF SPECIAL EFFECTS: Too many scenes say, "Hey, look what we can do with computers!", rather than focusing on compelling action and characters. At times it feels more like a sci-fi movie than a pirate adventure.
PLOT: Way too convoluted and repetitive. There are far too many scenes of characters creating overly-complicated deals with each other, only to pull a classic double-cross 15 minutes later. This happens roughly, oh, I'd say, about 1 billion times in this film. They're all pirates and can't be trusted. I got the point the first time.
A BOATLOAD OF CHARACTERS: The film tries to keep all the characters from the first two installments, while adding a bunch of new characters. At some point, there are just too many people running around on screen.
AN OVERLY-LONG RUN TIME: The first two movies were not short films by any means, but still seemed to fly by. This one is the longest of the bunch and bogs down in many areas. Instead of clever adventure sequences we get tedious, endless dialogue that doesn't really satisfy the audience.
If you're a fan of the first two films, it's hard to avoid the desire to see this one. Just be ready for a big disappointment compared to its predecessors. The end of this movie (rather obviously) sets up a fourth installment in the series. Here's hoping they get back on track with that one, although I'm not terribly interested in seeing any more of the "Pirates" series. With "At World's End" the series has overstayed its welcome.