Lost its Charm and its Excitement

Rating: 5/10 (24 May 2007)

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End reviewed by Samuel Osborn
The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has been a menagerie of CGI magic, dreaming up seafaring worlds of swashbuckling majesty, the emptiness of such computerized beauty filled in by the drunkenly feminine charm of Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). His personality was big enough for all the rest of the characters, of whom consisted mostly of archetypes we'd expect from a trilogy based off an amusement park ride. The plots are confusing little numbers, spinning half-baked legends around the myriad of story arcs each character was put to. They work mostly to provide coal for the furnace of stunt-work and CGI, both of which turn clenched jaws of suspense into wide-hanging maws of amazement. The characters, even Mr. Sparrow, are corkboards for personalities to be tacked on to. There's no evolution to these people; simply punch-lines and singular motivations. But up until this third installment, the shaky equation worked. I'd give much of the credit to director Gore Verbinski, who achieved the unlikely feat of maintaining an artist's handiwork throughout the duration of the colossal project. (Does anyone remember the creative collapse of X-Men when Brett Ratner took the reigns of the trilogy?) But with At World's End, the tangle of the franchise's formula catches up. The song put on repeat that each character sings has grown tiresome. And the plot mangles itself into a confusing bundle of tedium. After 168 minutes, it becomes a strange and bizarre phenomenon to be bored by such spectacle.
Picking up where Dead Man's Chest left off, Will Turner (Orland Bloom), Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), and their merry band of adventurers seek to bust Jack Sparrow from the confines of Davy Jones' (Bill Nighy) locker. The path to World's End, where the locker unexplainably exists, is held within the map of Captain Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat), a Singaporean Pirate Lord obsessed with steam. Finagling a shadowy deal with the Captain, Will Turner manages to secure a ship and a crew to take to Jones' locker with the understanding that Mr. Sparrow will repay a longstanding debt with Sao Feng when retrieved. You see, Turner isn't saving Sparrow for the sake of their friendship. Jack has always had a thing for Turner's fiancée, Elizabeth Swann, and has never been mum on the subject. Will is instead looking to save Sparrow to, in turn, use him to free his imprisoned father on board Davy's ship, The Flying Dutchman. It hasn't been fifteen minutes and already we're confused.
Anyway, it isn't long before Jack's busted out and a new plot thread must spool out. The nine remaining pirate lords, for a reason I missed somehow, decide to hold a summit on Shipwreck Isle. And here's where things get really confusing. Between Elizabeth Swann, Jack Sparrow, Captain Barbossa, Will Turner, Lord Beckett, Tia Dalma, Captain Sao Feng, Davy Jones, Bootstrap Bill, and Norrington, there are at least ten different motives for the script to juggle. But since all ends meet at Shipwreck Isle, the entire second hour of the film is spent making deals, betraying loyalty, forging accords, and stabbing backs before the summit is held. By the arrival of the third act I managed to have caught up. And seeing the immense mound of plot the script had hauled forward, it's realized that the epic tangle of characters and motives would be impressive were it not so damned tedious.
The plot razes all traces of the franchise's main attraction: charm. Investing fully in the complex web of story, it forgets that we care little for the motives of these characters as they pertain to the plot. Sparrow wants to be a pirate forever. Fine, what else did we expect? Turner wants to free his dad. OK, that's cute, Will. Swann likes the life of a pirate and wants the torch to be carried on. Whatever, she's like that. We care for these characters most in times of their clever verbal jousting, twirling swordplay, fantastic adventures. How they strike accords and deal with British administrative law are mere obligations to a story set in the pirating world. Yet At World's End insists upon putting that piece to the puzzle front and center. It's not a cushy piece of swashbuckling wonder with which to sink our teeth deliciously into. It's a surprising wooden block that our teeth shatter upon. It's boring, in short.
But when those clouds clear and the moonlit charm returns, Pirates is still, after all, Pirates. There are moments in those final two hours of this ridiculously long-winded saga that remind us why the franchise has raked in so much money thus far. They're few, but shining. And that first hour, when Barbossa and company go to world's end to crack the lock on Jones' locker, it's glistening, rousing entertainment. But like The Matrix Trilogy a few years back, Pirates of the Caribbean winds itself into a dry wrap of self-importance, forgetting the reasons seats were filled the first time round the ride. And by the time this go-round finally comes to a halt, the excitement has all but faded.
Samuel Osborn