robbed by pirates :(

Rating: 1/10 (2 June 2007)

(contains spoilers... but trust me, that won't matter).
it's safe to say that Johnny Depp single-handily made the 'pirate' series a success. if not for Depp telling interviewers Keith Richards inspired his captain jack-isms, Keith Richards would certainly not have appeared in the 3rd movie. in between the excessive amount of canon balls/sword fights scenes, i couldn't wait to get home and tear this movie to shreds.
it's such an easy formula: three parts jack sparrow, eleven parts talking about jack sparrow, two parts love stories, six parts pirate ships emerging from water, five parts capturing, five parts rescuing and ten parts action/violence/sword fights. mix haphazardly against elaborate sets and computer graphics. let set for three hours until the audience rises.
the movie could be broken down into FOUR major flaws:
POOR WRITING. it seemed the writers were very aware that audiences were only going to see 'Pirates' for Jack Sparrow, so they thought... "hmmm, if people love Jack so much... they'll love THREE jacks, or FOUR jacks, or even MORE Jacks!!" so they made scenes reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland where Jack hallucinates and sees many of himself. the mood and overall appearance of these scenes drastically contrast with the mood and overall appearance of the film. for a minute i thought i was watching an Oompa Loompa scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
TOO MANY CHARACTERS: accompanying poor writing was the addition of too many characters. in a nutshell: jack's crew (which was two crews combined), the British crew, the squid's crew, and a new Asian crew all have different agendas that (of course) require the other crews to be killed. Elizabeth (Knightly) becomes captain of the Asian crew, Orlando bloom becomes captain of the squid crew and Jack bounces between every crew as he is traded and captured for deal-making. Orlando bloom's character wants to free his father, Jack wants to be immortal, Kiera Knightly's character wants to be with Orlando Bloom again, the squid wants the sea goddess, Elizabeth wants to kill the British captain for killing her father, the British crew wants jack dead and the Asian crew wants to be a part of whichever crew is getting the treasure. but is there even treasure?!! the object they're all after is a beating heart. and yes, it's as confusing as it sounds.
OLD JOKES. just like the second, all of the "comedic" moments in the third movie relied on recycled material from the first movie. the humor in 'pirates' can be attributed to six subjects: 1) the wooden eye: kudos to whoever thought to give that guy a wooden eye because you added 30 pages of plot to each film!! 2) jack, the monkey: the only character whose acting improved by the third film. he's also in a lot more of the scenes in the third movie. my boyfriend thought he was the best part. and he was right. 3) rum jokes: the first movie relied heavily on rum jokes. since the third movie didn't know what the hell it was doing, it hit up the booze too. 4) the sexual tension between jack and elizabeth. the cliché "trust me, it would have never worked between us..." lines return again. 5) jack getting slapped: yes, women love to slap jack sparrow. we got that one already, thanks. 6) sheer stupidity/slapstick humor: the other nanoseconds of anticipated (but unreceived) humor relied on the dumb antics of the fat guy and the skinny guy with the wooden eye.
CONFUSING PLOT. it felt as though the writers made this movie up as they were filming it and when they were running low on plot someone said, "i know, let's make one of the crew members turn out to be a sea goddess!!" and since there are only two female main characters (one being Kiera Knightly), the Jamaican-sounding chick landed the role of sea goddess. this made the plot entertaining for about 20 seconds when the Jamaican chick turned into the 50 ft. woman and started talking like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and then exploded into millions of crabs at which point i leaned over to my boyfriend and said, "haha, she had crabs!!" needless to say, i don't plan on seeing the 4th or 5th or 6th Pirates movie. but i will be curious to see if Depp stays aboard.
bottom line: if you were planning on seeing pirates, go see Waitress instead. written by: Jena Ardell