Pirates of the Carriboring: When will it end?

Rating: 6/10 (25 May 2007)

You know when a film has the potential of being awesome, but it gets so caught up in its epic existence that it forgets that it's a movie. That's POTC 3 in a nutshell.
The film is not bad, but it really doesn't hold a candle to the first film, or even the second. It is extremely confusing and convoluted. At some points I wondered whether the scriptwriters even had a clue what was going on. The dialogue is self-referential garbage most of the time, playing up the first film's catch phrases etc. POTC 3 indulges itself so much in how great it thinks it is, that eventually one lands up getting bored. The mere scale of the film is enormous, so the plot and one-liners fall flat in the midst of some of the most amazing CGI sequences you will ever see.
See the film if only for the final 45 minute battle. It's an amazing achievement in special effects, highly entertaining and almost redeems the film for the first 2 dreary, empty hours of thinking "What the hell is going on?" The film is much more surreal than the first two and you often think to yourself, "Is this really happening?". Jack's schizophrenia is elaborated on to the point where it is way to obvious to be entertaining.
Ultimately, the characters seem less complex then we originally thought, and the plot is to complex to keep up with, as very little is explained.
168 minutes is long, and you do feel it, but do stay around for the last hour. It's spectacular, surreal and spellbinding.
All in all, POTC 3 is a satisfying film which eventually does messily manage to draw conclusions, even though you really don't know how the film arrived at them. It's not brilliant, it's no "Return Of the King" finisher (although no one thought it would), but at least it's satisfying enough, if a little forgettable. Just thank goodness they didn't mess it up as badly as "The Matrix Revolutions".
6/10