Confusing mess, but you do get some more Jack Sparrow

Rating: 5/10 (30 May 2007)

I remember seeing Star Wars for the first time as a 6-year old kid. I didn't get much of a plot, or anything for that matter, but I found all that swooshing and space battles and laser sword-fighting quite amusing. I did get a sense that the black helmet dude was sort of a bad guy, and all that handsome people the good ones, but that was more or less it.
So I gotta hand one thing to Pirates 3 - they really made me feel like that kid again. I was sitting in the movie theater, enjoying all that fancy sword fights, chases, explosions, storms and whatnot and 95% of the time I absolutely had no idea what the heck was going on.
Let's face it - Pirates 3 is a confusing mess. In fact, Pirates Trilogy is a confusing mess. The first movie was great as a standalone, but further down the road the plot became twisted, mangled, doubled over and tied to a triple Gordian knot. I suppose not even the script writers know what they want to say - every character seems to have his own motivations not even known to them completely, everybody double-crosses everybody, mystical objects, rules and characters get suddenly introduced, expanded and more often then not totally contradicted... as I said, in one word - mess.
Pirates trilogy could really work great as a party game - watch all the movies, divide in teams and every team should try to explain the storyline and fill out all the whos and whats and whys. Fun for the whole family.
Did I enjoy Pirates 3? Sure I was. Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow is always a joy to behold and Geoffrey Rush as Barbossa is probably the most swashbuckly arrr-talkingly pirate character ever put on screen. Bill Nighy squeezes out the most out of his quite one-dimensional character. The special effects are great and the piratey theme is spot on. Soundtrack is also proverbially good. There are quite a few jokes that do work. The movie passes by quickly, despite it's almost three hour duration.
But I cannot help but wonder whether the same characters could have been used in much more down-to-earth situations, in some less extravagant and more understandable plots where they could develop more naturally instead of using them just as convenient placeholders for whatever the relentless plot requires next.
Pirates could have been a great serial, but it seriously failed the expectations. Good casting is the only thing now that saves it from being downright tiresome. I'm not saying you should not watch this, you definitely should, it is essentially good old Hollywood popcorn cinema - just don't expect too much, and leave your brain at home. Savvy?