Drowned by it's own storyline pride

Rating: 5/10 (23 May 2007)

The third (hopefully final) film for Pirates of the Caribbean will attempt to be everything fans would hope for in a concluding trilogy, attempt being the key word here. Short of the few odd adult males attending in full pirate gear though, I am pretty sure most viewers ended up feeling At World's End's excessive running time. Appeasing die-hard fans (apparently there are more then we think) of the franchise to an exhausting degree, the film lumbers back and forth between various back-stabbings and double-crossings going on in Jack Sparrow's crew, all to tediously apathetic results. Likewise, the unnecessarily dense script tries too earnestly to explain all the hackneyed mythology brought up in the first two films and instead makes viewers care even less.
As as result, At World's End is not nearly as pleasurable as the first two's narrative arc would indicate. Bogged down by the detail-oriented plot, casual moviegoers will hardly get most details introduced previously in the series, let alone retain interest in these relatively obscure elements. It seems as if scribes Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio (both having written all three), realized the huge phenomenon Pirates had become, and spent their last screenplay vainly trying to justify all of the minor plot devices they thought viewers were interested in. They overvalued the specifics of this plot and in turn robbed the film of the one thing everybody loves; personality. Instead of letting characters breathe a little more on screen to make a lasting impression, At World's End spends a three hour run time ensuring viewers that every trite plot element from all three films will be given adequate closure.
Faulting the cast and crew would be wrong; At World's End continues the impeccable production values and credible performances that initially set this ship off into our collective wallets. Here though, the over-bloated script just makes the over-boated set design even more frustrating. Once the film's obnoxiously extended and over-the-top finale is underway, the excitement leading up to that perilous showdown has all but been extinguished. The film will still do well in theaters and rightfully so; there is enough big-budget mayhem intercut throughout the epic bore to ensure seats will be filled. But Pirates 3 will remain in my eyes a quintessential warning to all potential popcorn franchises as to not take themselves too seriously, despite any success hinting to the contrary.