One word: disappointing

Rating: 5/10 (27 July 2006)

I expected a lot from this movie, but I had a 'matrix-dejavu' feeling when I left the theater. First was a brilliant movie, but then came the 2nd movie...
Even when not comparing it to the first-one it was disappointing to say the least. Most of the supposed to be funny moments weren't spontaneous at all, in my opinion mostly due to bad scripting/directing. There's not much you can say about Johnny Depp's acting, only that it couldn't save the movie for me.
The movie felt inconsistent, forced, some things compressed into very little time, and some very lengthy things that have absolutely no contribution to the whole movie, except for making it longer. It felt like an episode of a very expensive but bad sitcom where nothing really happened except work towards a cliffhanger. I suppose I know what the highlight/peak of the movie was supposed to be, but it didn't impress me at all, and I wasn't the only-one that felt this way.
One of the things that also irritated me most is that it felt like they had to fit all characters from the 1st movie back into it, which seemed unnatural, some of the characters served little or no purpose in the movie. Also, the characters in general are inconsistent, certainly towards the end it goes completely wrong. There's little interaction between Keira and Orlando, virtually none between Orlando and Johnny, and a little bit between Keira and Johnny, but not much at all. The movie doesn't concentrate on characters at all, which was one of the better things in the 1st movie, which also resulted in most of the funny moments. Now the focus seemed to be on special effects and some far too long script to tell what there is to be told. Making an 'extensive' resume of the story would take fewer lines than I wrote here in this comment.
I wouldn't go see the movie when you haven't seen the first-one. A few of the moments that actually made me smile were references to the first-one, and also the script relies too much on the audience knowing what happened in the first movie and knowing the characters. Offcourse it is a "Pirates of the Caribbean 2", so some things could and should refer to the first movie, but this much? No thank you...