Too much of a good thing a bad thing???

Rating: 6/10 (14 July 2006)

I went in to the theater with great expectation for Dead mans Chest and to begin with it was looking good.
I like the darkness of which the film started, it made me think that it was going to give a much more bleaker outlook on piracy and life on the open sea. the cinematography was brilliant, with really gloomy shots in the torrential rain. but then we are waiting perhaps a further 15 minutes before any sign of a story kicks in. and to be honest there is pretty much no link at all to the previous episode "The Black Pearl" apart from the characters, the ship and the setting. That wouldn't really matter if this was a great film.... but in all honestly it isn't.
Firstly lets take the best thing from the original - Johnny Depp's performance. in "The Black Pearl" it was fantastic, funny and curious. but in "Dead mans Chest" the film studio have really milked it too much. Every scene has Jack Sparrow stumbling/mumbling/cracking one liners. (some of which are very good) after maybe 45 minutes we have seen good ol' Jack being chased several times doing his silly lean backwards run...... it gets really repetitive and loses its humor. i felt this about his part for most of the movie.
Other characters just don't develop at all apart from Norrington, Orlando Bloom still can't act and Keira Knightly is a weak leading lady. both of their characters have no new story to tell, apart from Will turners dad turning up..... but we learn nothing new about this side story at all. so what was the purpose of his dad being in this film?
The comic relief characters of pintel and ragetti are brilliant, as they were in the first adventure. There are other things to enjoy here too, The SFX, the set design and score are all excellent.
I think i was expecting a lot more and maybe the 3rd installment will deliver a lot of answers and tie the stories in together better. as a popcorn movie "Dead Mans Chest" works OK, but i left the theater with nothing much to think about other than a character from the first film reappearing at the finale, but even this twist felt like it was put in because "you have to have a twist".
I am looking forward to the 3rd part, but i feel let down (not matrix reloaded style) enough to not get overly excited by it.