Entertaining, but too many supernatural elements make the overall story hollow

Rating: 6/10 (10 August 2007)

The movie has action, humour, a few plot twists, and thanks to these, it doesn't really feel boring on the first view. The problem with the movie is that it has far too many supernatural elements: different kinds of immortality, many possibilities of eternal or semi-eternal damnation, several different magical gimmickries with very weird rules, the ship that's faster than any other for no obvious reason (the black pearl), a very supernatural ship (the Dutchman), and other things I won't mention not to spoil the plot.
If you have one supernatural force, there's no problem: for example the first movie worked just fine, as do Star Wars movies with their "force". But the second and especially the third film in the Pirates series just mix too many elements, and that's why nothing seems to matter any more. Luckily the movie has humour and even ironizes its weird characters and multiple cases of supernaturality. Still, although entertaining, the whole experience seems somewhat hollow.
Jack Sparrow is still fun, but the first sequel was more funny and less of a mess than this one, and the first pirates film had a far more coherent plot. Still, if you like adventure films spiced up with humour, and don't care about getting that deep into the characters you'll probably love this. And even if you aren't a friend of these types of films, chances are you'll still like it for its entertainment value.