Not the Best Movie Ever!

Rating: 6/10 (8 July 2006)

Major Spoiler Warning!!!!! It seems that Disney decided to follow in the footsteps of the Wachowski brother's with this sequel. Like the Matrix the first movie was a stellar production, but once it was decided that there were to be three installments the production became rather lack-luster. You can't call this the best movie ever because the damned thing hasn't ended! There is absolutely no conclusion to any portion of the story arc what-so-ever in this film. Like the Matrix the main character has been lost to the great unknown and the audience is left with nothing but expectations. It's like the cheap tricks that television series use at the end of the season, make a giant cliff hanger so all the fans will watch the season opener for the following year. I would expect more from a production of this quality, even if it is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer of CSI fame.
Another complaint I have is the slow opening with little or no explanation for what has happened during the intervening years. The letters of Mark offered by Lord Beckett seem nothing more than a poor construct to once again thrust Will and Elizabeth into the storyline. There's no explanation for the island from which Jack escapes in the coffin, nor how he or anyone else came to posses a picture of the key. And questions similar to these abound throughout the film.
While the acting is in top form, there are too many plot holes and inconsistencies which mar the effect. The comedy was little more than slapstick, with dreadful one liners that were funny, but didn't add to the effect. Several people have commented on the poor CGI effects. I have to admit this is the first movie I've been too in quite some time where I could actually see the screen in the background. When the Kraken rises behind Jack when he is chained to the mainsail you can see speckling on the screen around him, I haven't seen green-screen that shoddy in years.
I guess I'm just upset because I really felt that Dead Man's Chest, like the Curse of the Black Pearl, would be a complete in and of itself. Instead I felt the producers would have been better suited to borrow from Quentin Tarantino and title the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest volume I. There is no conclusion; Jack walks into the belly of the Kraken, Davy Jones returns to the briny deep, and lo and behold Barbossa is back from the dead.
Who knows maybe in the next installment they'll actually answer some questions and deliver a completed script?