The crew are back and somethings never change.

Rating: 8/10 (7 July 2006)

On their wedding day Will (Bloom) and Elizabeth (Knightley) are arrested by Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander) for helping Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp) escape in the previous film. To save themselves Will is given the task of tracking Sparrow down and coming back with his compass. Jack, however, is having problems of his own as an old debt comes back to haunt him (literally).
This is a good film. One immediate problem I have is its length. At 150 minutes it's only a touch longer than the original, but it feels like 2 1/2 hours.
Where the first film was funny in a sly way PotC 2 tries to be funny, and this never works except in spoofs. Trying to bring back so many of the original cast, especially Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook as light relief doesn't work and their scenes could be largely cut to save time.
The original cast (Depp, Bloom and Knightley) slip back in to their original parts well. My one criticism is that Bloom's naive, put upon Will is trying now. Where he should have grown and matured he still walks around with a slapped puppy-dog look for most of the time and it doesn't work anymore. Depp is brilliant.
The villains. In this type of film you need to be slightly pantomime to not get lost under the weight of the films premise. Bill Nighy as Davy Jones looks a little lost under the weight of make-up and CG needed for his character. A little bigger performance would have gone down a treat. Tom Hollander's Beckett is good, but again the twists and turns of the plot seem to bury him. Maybe he'll really get some screen time and something worthy to do in the last part.
Brilliant action scenes both on land and at sea fill out the summer blockbuster criteria. From the slightly comic, tongue-in-cheek fights between Depp, Bloom and the returning Jack Davenport as Norrington to massive, ship smashing clashes between The Flying Dutchman and The Black Pearl as well as an appearance from the Kraken, a huge sea monster raised by Davy Jones. You really feel these set-pieces.
A good night out, but as the middle part of the trilogy it feels slightly incomplete and needs a little more bite. Go and see it, it'll leave you wanting the final part.