Tight script. Deep character arcs. Rewarding ending. This movie has none of those. Here's why.

Rating: 1/10 (7 January 2007)

"We're not making a movie about pirates, we're making a pirate movie" was the motto Curse of the Black Pearl was made under, and it worked fantastically. Fast paced, funny and dazzling. The undead came into it but were used to give the plot an extra dimension and actually add to the story, not diminish it.
All I wanted with the sequel was more ship combat, and less reliance on over the top CGI, not a film that breaks some of the most basic rules of film structure.
Problems start almost immediately when Jack blasts a crow. Sure, he's shot Barbossa and doesn't have to save his bullets anymore, but a pirate as accomplished as Jack wouldn't go wasting shot on something like that! It's completely against his character; though going out of character happens all too often in this film. More on that later.
What follows is the most messed up and muddled film I've seen in living memory. Why? Two words: The Natives. The whole time they spend on that island with the cannibals (all...40ish minutes of it), not only has nothing to do with anything else, but it grinds the movie to a halt. It's more like an episode of 'the adventures of Jack Sparrow' with a ridiculous premise: he suddenly finds himself king of a tribe that does everything he says as long as they get to burn him alive? That's got to be the biggest act of Deus Ex Machina since Alice discovers Wonderland was an LSD dream.
By the way- I have nothing wrong with Johnny Depp, he does a superb job with what he is given, which in this case values a Sparrowfest at the cost of any real cohesive story.
Of course, with pirate movies, there are always sword-fights and ship battles. The sword-fight is outstanding. It's got some of that 'have to make it more extreme than what we've already done' school of thought that made the new Star Wars trilogy so camp, but damn- it's so in-your-face and perilous that you don't care. The ship battles though, are pathetic. I mean, there are no less than three encounters, right? and EVERY SINGLE TIME it looks like we're in for a decent ship battle, they bring out the CGI infested Kraaken. It's good the first time- another high-seas myth referenced. Then it becomes apparent that they're going to use it whenever a ship needs attacking. There is a brief section where a revolving tri-barreled cannon is used instead (what the hell? this isn't Apocalypse Now!) but nobody seems to stay on the water for more then 5 minutes without getting attacked by the giant squid, which even when severely crippled by an explosion triggered by a bullet-time shot (bullet time? in a pirate movie? next they'll be punching through walls...) it STILL comes after them, even-though-it-loses-about-three limbs-completely. Now, if someone blew off my legs and an arm, I'd damn well call it quits, but no, they are informed it will be back, as if losing multiple appendages is a daily occurrence for the beast. Yeah right.
OK, so enough of that- what about these character problems, you say? still not convinced? In the first film, Elizabeth clearly has no attraction to Jack whatsoever, and yet while he has that crucial pardon document on his person she can't stop glaring at him with smouldering eyes. At the time I always figured the compass was showing she wanted that document back to use as leverage, which was an interesting plan, but no, it turns out she's just hot for him, and why? because of the fan-base. Nothing kills movie franchises like a director who starts compromising on stuff just to please fans. Even if she only smooches him to save herself it still 'had to be there', right? Wrong.
This brings up another point. A HUGE point. Will actually SEES Liz and Jack going at it, and considering everything he's done for both of them you'd expect him to be angry, enraged; absolutely livid. But surprisingly when everyone jumps into the 'Yes, let's go and save Jack' mob at the end, Will joins them without even batting an eyelid. Either he's got no long term memory, or someone ripped his spine out. Or maybe the scriptwriters just hoped nobody would notice the plot hole the size of Port Royale itself. They probably also wanted people to view Norrington as a villain, but not a single thing he did during the film overturned the huge sympathy I had for him, given what has happened to him so far.
And if you're going to show an extinct game being played -for such high stakes- make sure you give at least a hint as to how it works! Any suspense the dice game could have had was totally destroyed by the fact that nobody in the audience knew how the game is played! Finally, the ending is such a blatant disregard of the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' mantra. Not only does it say pretty much everything Jack fought for in the original movie was for absolutely nothing, it left us wondering what other crap will be changed around for the next one. Perhaps those two Royal Navy guards will return in the third as werewolves or something equally absurd. It's clear that the franchise is now more sci-fi eye candy than anything resembling an old swashbuckler like Black Pearl was.
The after credit sequence in Pearl opened up some new story possibilities, but the one in this? It just reminds you that the dog is set to be roasted, without actually resolving the situation, or even advancing it! They might as well have shown the candle holder in Elizabeth's house falling off the wall again instead- at least that would have got a laugh or two.
Biggest disappointment of the year, and the worst sequel since Mission Impossible 2.