At Wit's End

Rating: 2/10 (23 October 2007)

My first thought, early into Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, was simple enough: This is a pirate movie Uncle Walt would have hated.
Walt Disney would have never allowed this film to come out of his studios. The film begins with the hanging execution of a twelve-year old boy, and never grows much lighter in tone. It crawls through filthy brothels and opium dens and among the undead, foremost among them being Jack Sparrow--who was killed off needlessly in the preceding chapter as a cheap plot device.
The lack of sophistry in the writing is made up for by the thematic "I see dead people". Everything is darker, more ghostly, more black; more bleak. Missing is any earthly connection to piracy, swashbuckling, or even witty one liners. Jack Sparrow himself seems to have been enervated completely by his return from the dead and robbed of all charm, rakish spirit, and derring-do.
If there were ever a case for a movie being destroyed by easy availability of 3D digital effects, it can be made here. The film wallows in supernatural fantasy, and never stops. It isn't a movie about pirates at all--it's a movie about resurrection from the dead, sailing off the end of the world, giant sea goddesses who turn into crabs, cannon battles that take place in maelstroms, and other such nonsense. The silliest and most pointless gag occurs when the formerly late Mr. Sparrow leads his crew in turning a galleon upside down by rocking it (an absurdity in itself), and then the lot of them hold their breaths--for several minutes--while the cosmic bathtub sea the ship is floating in drains, proving cryptically that "Down is Up". After watching this, I could only wonder: What were the screenplay writers smoking..?
The film also depends upon blood sacrifice of protagonists and tugging on family heartstrings to engender goosebumps. Most of this is simple killing off of secondary characters--although the screenwriters can't resist using the most exhausted cliché in modern movie history: The hero's interaction with his long-lost father. It was an interesting twist twenty-six years ago in The Empire Strikes Back. It was a fun diversion eighteen years ago, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It has since become a bloody annoyance. At least the writers don't kill him off. (Although, I suppose, if they did, they would have simply brought him back from the dead..along with half the rest of the cast.)
This otherworldly sequel is as dreary, eerie, and bizarre as a Stephen King novel. Much bragging exists about how this Hollywood gold was mined from a mere theme park ride. Well, the ride is better conceived and more entertaining--and will be around long after 'At World's End' has been forgotten.
And by the way---Errol Flynn is still the King.