More of the same. Lots more.

Rating: 5/10 (9 July 2006)

I found the first "Pirates" movie to be an unexpected delight. I had never seen a pirate movie I liked before, so I went in interested but with low hopes. After all, this was a film with a troubled production, whose shoot went significantly over schedule and budget. Reshoots were employed. These are usually bad signs for a movie and bode ill for its ultimate disposition. And really - a movie based on an amusement park ride?
However, from the surprisingly convoluted but still neatly self-connected plot to the top drawer visual effects and of course the performances (including Depp's, an actor I had never previously had much opinion of), "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" turned out to be so much more than I had thought it would be. As one reviewer somewhere said (L.A. Weekly, I think), these are movies for people who do not like pirate movies.
Count me in! I like to have my buckle swashed from time to time, but I do not count myself a pirate movie fan. Yet I LOVED "Curse of the Black Pearl".
So, I was really looking forward to the release of Dead Man's Chest. Bill Nighy was an added bonus; I saw he was to play Davey Jones (he of the locker). I loved his work in the "Underworld" films, "Love Actually" and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
The plot sounded promising; Jack Sparrow owes a debt to Davey Jones: his soul! He does everything in his power to get out of repaying it, including enlisting the help of every character from the first movie.
So where did it all go wrong?
The movie is too damned long. There are too many characters. Not enough happens of significance; too much happens for the sake of on screen action. Time is elastic in the plot; people travel to and from ports and islands with amazing rapidity, to the point where the audience is wondering if these people have simply developed the power of teleportation. And really, this feels more like a remake than a sequel. Phantom ship? Check. Supernaturally enhanced crew? Check. Curse? Check. Outrageously staged sword fights? Check. Etc...
The special effects are as amazing as ever, though the kraken both appears too often and yet not enough of it is seen each time.
Sadly, the movie is more an endurance contest than a giddy ride. In fact, it is very much like the "dark tunnel" amusement park ride: sit down and watch everything scroll by without actually caring about or being a part of it. Characters are already established from the first film (a dozen or so) and nobody grows or changes except for maybe, maybe a glimmer out of Jack and Elizabeth.
Special note here about Johnny Depp: Jack Sparrow was very much a one-note performance in the first film, but enjoyable due to the character's unpredictability. As written here, Jack is as predictable as gravity, and about as interesting. He is a dead center in a film that desperately needs a live one, and no amount of fey sashaying or uncoordinated sprinting at the head of a cannibal tribe does anything to change that.
Plotwise, things just happen and happen and happen in this movie to the point of boredom; what should be a rousing three-way swordfight on a rolling mill water wheel is just dull and the kraken attacks (all four of them) are simply variations on a theme.
The creative team here has really used the last ounce of goodwill they generated with "Curse of the Black Pearl" to create this loud, frequently boring, sporadically amusing and overlong mess.
At least the next (and last?) film will tie up all plot threads from this one and hopefully give us a rousing, satisfying end to this stuff.