The ride's just as fun the second time around!

Rating: 8/10 (8 July 2006)

Several years ago, the notion of a successful pirate movie was about as realistic as the success of some unknown character named "Mickey Mouse" must've been way back in the 1920's. Scripters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio must've gotten some real dumb looks from some higher-ups when they initially pitched their script. A movie based on a well-loved "amusement park" ride - a couple dozen years after it opened - and just as long since any pirate movie was even received all that well?
Well, shiver me timbers, me buckos! $600 million later, a genre was given new life! "Curse of the Black Pearl" showed the movie-going masses the kind of innocent, rip-roaring, swashbuckling fun that isn't easy to glean from many of the films getting passed 'round. And to boot, if one didn't know any better, he wouldn't be privy that the movie was even based on a ride at Disneyland.
Comes the second installation in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" saga: "Dead Man's Chest". So, what now that Cap'n Jack Sparrow has regained his long-lost prize, the Black Pearl? Well, we know he can't just up and get away with making a mockery of the Royal Army, and especially not the East India Trading Company. But who else is out for a piece of Jack? And...just how many pieces of him are there to go around?
"Dead Man's Chest" is definitely no failure to the established summer movie formulas. Fencing, fighting, torture, monsters, chases and escapes via special effects abound. Like its predecessor in 2003, it's all put to good use with extremely witty and inventive storytelling. And it's all out on display on such lush, extravagant backgrounds and movie sets. Much like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, effort was obviously poured into making the story so compellingly gripping, you'd almost forget that in the heat of the action, you're really still sitting in a movie theatre.
The most stunning success of "Dead Man's Chest" has to be the realization of a magnificently fantastic soundtrack, worthy of any mega epic. Great though the soundtrack of the original was, Hans Zimmer has come aboard and created a masterpiece symphony - Hornpipes to accompany us on a journey into the seedy underworld of Tortuga - a massive pipe organ played by none other than Davy Jones himself...and even a little dinner music to muse our appetites.
Alas though, the Chest isn't completely chock full of gold and treasure. Likely, "Dead Man's Chest"'s most obvious pitfall is one present in many movie trilogies: The dreaded Volume II syndrome. It has no real beginning nor does it have much of an end. This tends to make the story drag just a bit since there's so much room to continue the saga's progression to the third volume. It could even be argued that the movie's 143 minute running time is at least 15 minutes too long, but once the slower pace picks right back up to full-bore, that sentiment fades.
And know ye this...there is a quite darker undertone in this Chest. It's not quite the glorified, happy-go-lucky nature that the little kiddies ate up in "Curse of the Black Pearl". Better squeeze the little ones a little tighter, 'cause dead man REALLY tell no tales...
It's well-known by now that Johnny Depp is quite keen to keep donning the costume and make-up of the Cap'n. And with the awe-inspiring inventiveness and the vivid imaginations of the POTC crew on display, I'd be willing to bet there are many meager souls willing to pay a few more gold coins to hop aboard the Black Pearl another time or two and set out to the open seas of the Caribbean.
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" gets 8 of 10 stars.