Effects driven sequel that fails on imagination

Rating: 3/10 (10 February 2009)

Captain Jack (Depp) looks to square his debt with sea lord Davy Jones (Nighy) by finding his heart, but Will (Bloom) and Norrington (Davenport) are also after it.
The anticipated sequel to The Curse of the Black Pearl brings all the familiar faces back and none more expected than Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, the Oscar nominated hero from the first instalment, a fine and spontaneous creature with an unfathomable mind and a devilish heart who is sadly not in this film.
Depp (Edward Scissorhands) returns alright, but not as the man we loved from Black Pearl. Everything sadly about the character is wrong. The timing is off, the spontaneity has evaporated and everything about Captain Jack seems formulaic, as if conforming to the concept generated by the media, rather than the narrative. The franchise killed the character. The theme park ride increased, toys were made along with imitations present in films such as Epic Movie and somehow that got into the head of the much loved star. And it is the script above everything else that destroys this film, and our hero.
Curse of the Black Pearl worked so well because it was relatively simple. Sure the complex ideology of the Aztec gold had heads working overtime but the character story lines were basic but entertaining. Here there are too many additional protagonists, the effects are all over the place (Oscar winning or not they are too muddled and too in your face) and the political agenda enforced takes the shine of the pirate tale.
The additional Governors, villains and crew feel encoded for the vastness of the scenery rather than the significance of the plot. They are there to make the story feel huge, but oversteps into overwhelming and incomprehensible Yes the effects are fantastic. The Dutchman is visually stunning and the darkness of the first is given a vivid shake up by this depiction of evil pirates. However the story of Jones' love life and his protagonist in general bring the imagination down. His image too is way overdone. The skeletons in the previous film were just right for fantasy, but this feels like a sick nightmare rather than a legend of the sea.
The political madness ruins the fun and imagination of pirates and you have to wonder why this is even encoded in the first place.
Dead man's chest offers a computer generated sequel that is consistently poor with infrequent surprises and a tendency to attempt the far fetched when the simple mildness of the first would have sufficed.