Holding judgment for now.

Rating: Null/10 (21 July 2006)

I didn't put down a star vote yet cause I don't think it is fair to rate this film with out seeing the last movie, which comes out next year. The evil tease I know it is.
The first Pirates movie was amazing showing us Depp at some of his best and adventure in ways we forgot it could be. It would be very hard to follow that up and while watching this film I wondered, did they try to hard? This film starts with the apparently ruined wedding of Elizabeth and Will. We are never really told why it is not really happening, though it is an out door wedding and it is raining. While we observe Elizabeth on the ground apparently in grief some officers show up and arrest her and Will for helping Jack in the last film. They then convince Will to go to Jack so that they can collect jack and his strange compass.
Sounds like a good plot and things sound even more interesting when you learn that Jack owes Davey Jones (not from the Monkees) his soul for allowing Jack to capn the Black Pearl.
The acting was again amazing as were the FX in the film. The cast of soul captured pirates who serve Davey Jones look amazing and some what smelly. THe problem I found with this film, and I hope the next will fix, is that it was a lot like the first in plot but lacked the imagination and pace of the first.
I found my self watching many useless scenes in which nothing was served except to make the film well over two hours (the fight in the bar when we meet the now bum like Norrington served nothing for the film at all and was so boring). We do get to see many of the old characters in great light and hear many well written references to the first but they get lost among useless and drawn out film.
There were other plot tools I found some what dumb as well. The romantic triangle between Elizabeth, Jack, and Will was painful and did not seem honest to any of their characters (at least Elizabeths and Jacks).
This film did have many fun parts in it and was good and all but was not great or fantastic. I found myself wishing they had left out much of it and explained other smaller things (I got some being a history buff and all but found some others wondering about them), like who are the bad guys after Jacks compass, who is Davey Jones, w2here did the two funny British soldiers go (man I missed them).
Like I started off saying, this film may end up better when the last one is out and I can put lots of stuff together. I hope that next one does not drag however and allows us to return to the magic of the first Pirates movie.