Flawed but highly entertaining

Rating: 7/10 (25 May 2007)

The POTC franchise reminds me a lot of the Matrix, and POTC 3 reminded me in many ways of the final Matrix film. Those of you who can remember my lengthy rant/essay about the Matrix films on GD will know that's an ominous sign. The chief similarity is that the first film was essentially stand-alone (and also the best), while the second and third films were essentially one large plot-arc chopped in two, complete with tantalising cliff-hanger ending. Both also involved characters returning from the dead, new villains being introduced, an avalanche of special-effects, and... importantly... a ridiculously large amount of plot, none of it particularly sophisticated.
The Pirates films are not subtle in how they appeal to their core demographic. Unfortunately, when you make sequels you need to keep upping the ante, and when your product isn't subtle or intricate that seems to involve making everything ridiculously excessive. At least in Hollywood it does. The excess is everywhere: the film is ridiculously long, with many completely needless sections; there's a huge roster of characters, including endless side-kicks and sub-plots; the star cameos are endless and the plot is needlessly convoluted and over-cooked, with a seemingly endless series of betrayals as everyone double-crosses everyone else, and then reverts back again. We're not talking about Where Eagles Dare (surely the daddy of ridiculous double-cross plot lines) either, as few of the double-crosses seem necessary. I'm not even sure why half of the plot was needed at all beyond providing an excuse for the set-pieces. There are also countless moments where plausibility is bent to fracture-point in order to make sure the good guys won through.
Of course, when you cut past all that, there's a lot of fun to be had in the film. What particularly struck me is how it provided such a sharp contrast between humour and darkness, with both pervading every scene in an almost Oscar Wildean absurdist inversion of values. Comic interludes were often jet-black in their humour: the frost-bite scene is the kind of visual gag you'd expect from George Romero, not a Disney film. Meanwhile, moments of life and death and key plot progression are shot through with tongue-in-cheek comic touches, even when you'd expect all emphasis to be on the plot. There were also moments of gruesome brutality that made this film dark enough to separate it from the saccharine fluff you associate with family films.
And really, it's the humour that carries the film, far more than the action, which is as frequently as over-cooked as the film's plot. Johnny Depp chews up the scenery as much as he ever did as Jack Sparrow, while his motley crew also chip in lots of good laughs. The film was also capable of being at its most clever with the humour: the post-modernism that was evident in POTC2 gets stronger than ever here. Keith Richards' cameo was a good moment of self-awareness, while I appreciated the running sea-turtles gag, which is thinly-veiled metafiction at its daftest.
Oh, and the music. Hans Zimmer is rapidly elbowing in on John Williams' territory as Hollywood's premier composer of crowd friendly and versatile scores. The main themes are as epic as ever, while this time round there's an infusion of Oriental influences and some more modern touches. It also, bizarrely, channels Ennio Morricone in Spaghetti Western mode at several moments: the parlay scene's music was surely a homage to Once Upon A Time In The West. Good stuff.
So it's far from perfect and no classic, but it's still worth seeing, particularly if you're a fan of the series.