Who would have thought the Black Pearl could jump a shark?

Rating: 7/10 (22 June 2011)

...and so the two part Pirates 2/3 story (made to look like a 3 part by cunningly fashioning part 2 to fit to the original) comes to a conclusion and, in so doing, blows away a lot of the goodwill generated by 1 and maintained by 2.
This is a mess, and it is difficult to conceive that it was developed at the same time as the far-more-coherent part 2. There is nothing inherently wrong with the cast (although Keira Knightley is starting to get a bit tiresome in this one), performances or effects. It's all down to the script.
The problem is that there are too many factions and each one has its own agenda. You have Jack, Elizabeth, Will, Davy Jones, Barbossa, Norrington, Beckett, Calypso, the pirate council, and they all have different ships and ever-changing alliances and maguffins (especially Davy Jones' heart) switching backwards and forwards between them. It becomes very like a bedroom farce, only with pirate ships instead of bedroom doors, and with locked boxes, maps, and magic compasses instead of trousers which won't stay up.
This was not a complete disaster, but it was a definite disappointment after what had come before.