Sea sickness...

Rating: 6/10 (29 May 2007)

The first two films in this series were absolute gems. I'd hoped to hold off reviewing any of them until I'd had the chance to see them all. Unfortunately, the third (and no doubt final) chapter in this trilogy has been written... and is to be found lacking. Ponderous in the beginning (so much so that I found myself drifting off- and pirate stories were a staple of my childhood, and among the kind of stories I enjoy to this day), PIRATES III manages to confound the viewer (at least, this one) by bogging down in too much piratical patter. Action speaks louder than words- especially in a pirate movie, made with sound... The long, drawn out hallucinatory sequence with Johnny Depp had my eyes rolling back in my head. Alfred Hitchcock once ventured that he should've left a scene out of a movie he'd made when he came to understand that the audience saw something happen in the scene that hadn't actually happened in the movie proper (the scene recounted was a lie). His audience had been confused. It was a valuable lesson, and he never made that mistake again. I mention this only in passing.