Lives up to my expectations.

Rating: 8/10 (7 July 2006)

Let me start out by saying I love love love love LOVE the Curse of the Black Pearl, so this sequel was a bit frightening for me. As soon as I heard they were making it, I quickly assumed the worst would come of it. Then recently when I started seeing all the commercials and previews I thought "well... it actually doesn't look half bad". What an understatement! This is probably going to go down as what I consider one of the best sequels ever (I'll wait until the third installment before I make the call). In fact, on the way home from seeing it, I got in a chat with my friend about it possibly being the best trilogy ever, beating even Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. I love both of those, but PotC just seems to have that rewatchability that I usually require.
The same friend said before we got there that he heard it was going to be a much more serious movie, to which I replied "we'll see". Thankfully, he was fairly wrong as they never failed to keep the laughs coming. They can take the most serious of situations like, oh I don't know.... a man about to become barbecue, and turn it into a hilarious bit of comedy.
In general, I think Dead Man's Chest is a much grander movie. Everything seems bigger and badder (as in Michael Jackson's "Bad", not bad like the Buffalo Bills' Super Bowl record) and wilder and funnier. The visual effects were pretty much mind-boggling. The costume/character design was amazing to the point of I would seriously be infuriated if they don't win every award for it. Everything is so superb as far as cinematography goes.
A smaller detail, if you needed convincing, this movie will no doubt prove to you that Keira Knightley is one of the sexiest people alive.
The rest you can probably assume. The plot was great and somehow worked out well, The acting was nothing horrible, etc etc etc.
You might be asking how I have all these great things to say about the movie, and still give it an 8. Two reasons. One, I reserve 10's for what I think are the absolute best movies (by my standards, which aren't normal), so this is starting at a 9. Two, it took a little while to get going. The first 30 or 40 minutes just had some seemingly desperate attempts to connect random things to things that happened in the first film.
If you only had time to read one sentence of this review, I hope it will be the next one. This movie was not only worth more than the $8.50 I paid to see it, but it was worth seeing it while sitting in front of five preteen girls with candy in plastic bags, and the gift of gab.