Entertaining, but that's all

Rating: 5/10 (22 April 2008)

Great cast, vast scope, decent writing and plot, excellent effects, fair directing - mediocre movie.
Johnny Depp drunkenly and flamboyantly swaggers through yet another piratical farce as Jack Sparrow, the apparently dead captain of The Black Pearl. Another dead captain (Barbossa - Geoffrey Rush), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), Sao Feng (Chow Yun Fat) and the lovely Elizabeth (Keira Knightley), team up to extract Jack from Davey Jones' (Bill Nighy) Locker - a desert island where dead pirates end up. Why? Well, it's actually sort of unclear, but it seems that they want to end Jones' scourge and gain their freedom from the British fleet's persecution once and for all... or something. And oh ya, they bring along the goddess Calypso, bound ages ago into a human form by pirates, just in case she wants to help her persecutors fight against her former lover Jones.
Rush is great, Depp is amusing and the rest of the cast does well. The sea battles and visual effects are particularly good. But the film's meandering plot, and over-emphasis on frenetic visual activity detracts from its aesthetics and renders it merely entertaining in a very Disney way. Epic, repetitively paced and hyperactive, World's End is the least interesting of the Pirates of the Caribbean Series.