Self-indulgent rip-off

Rating: 3/10 (26 May 2007)

We went to see this today. It's a long film, with far too much time spent in boring fight sequences. The plot is peculiar and convoluted to say the least.
Sadly, too, there is little novelty here. The same old characters, mainly, continue in the same old way.
If you enjoyed the previous two films, then there is much to enjoy here, it is fun, but it leaves you much less satisfied than before.
I was surprised, and impressed, that Captain Sparrow appears to be something of a classicist, or lawyer as, at one point, and aptly, he says 'res ipse loquitur' and there are no sub-titles to interpret the remark. Could this lead to more children taking an interest in Latin? If so, three cheers to the film, that sort of intellectually enriching stuff is seldom seen, or, rather, heard, in a Hollywood film.
There are some amazingly sloppy anachronisms, though. Early in the film a child sings before being executed, and shows us that he is undergoing modern orthodontic treatment. It'd have been easy to conceal his braces, or, better, to have used another child. Is this just laziness, or is it a deliberate signal that they're taking the peess out of the audience because they don't care as long as they get the money - or is there some excuse that it's a 'post-modernist' piece of deliberate rubbish (relabelled because of IMDb yankish puritanism)?
Some scenes appear to have been left in without any recollection of the original point. There's a rotting sea creature (a giant squid perhaps) on the beach at one point that the characters walk around, prod and consider it's huge eye - the reason for this isn't ever explained and there is no point to it in character or plot development, it's just there. Why couldn't it have been cut out? The film would have been shorter and less pointless - I suppose they spend a lot of money making the creature so had to include it as some sort of justification.
Keith Richards appearing as Jack's father has very little point to it, apart from just that - it's a self -indulgent reference to Depp using him as part of his character development. Clearly Keith manages to live, against all odds, but he can't act.
Unless you're really keen on the Pirates, and I'm quite fond of them, I must say, I'd avoid this. The little Latin isn't enough to make it interesting, not really. There were one or two rather good jokes, but, tellingly, I can't remember them a few hours later. The multiple Depp instantiations, as Sparrow's hallucinations, are, again, simply self- indulgence, it diminishes the effect of Depp's character and makes it all feel as if it is just a vehicle for his acting - good acting, certainly, in context, but shallow and mannered when isolated like this, it makes him appear simply hammy, an unkindness, I think, to Depp's undoubted talent.
Calypso, the goddess, apparently, was deeply unimpressive, as was the silly puzzle that looked interesting, but was trite in solution, to returning from Davey Jones Locker.
In summary, to long, to thin and too lazy.