Remember the old saying "Less is more"?

Rating: 6/10 (30 July 2006)

The second part in the "Pirates Of The Caribbean" franchise has the same advantages and flaws as the first one. The storyline is just a unnecessarily complicated and the movie can't really decide whether it wants to be suitable for kids or not. By now we've gotten used to Johnny Depp's weird performance, although I'm still not entirely convinced by it.
Still, the movie is full of great ideas for action sequences (even more so than part one!) and mostly the chemistry between the actors works fine. Here's the thing: THIS MOVIE IS WAY TOO LONG! It's like a neverending roller-coaster ride. Things fly through the air, people are thrown around like volley balls, ships explode, a monster Kraken unleashes hell. After two hours the headache starts and it's just too much. It's an annoying trend in Hollywood that probably started with the Matrix and the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Also, why is it not enough to make just one sequel these days? Why do they have two come in pairs? I'm so fed up with a movie ending right in the middle of the story, so you have to wait another year until you've already forgotten about everything that happened in the previous part.
Well, it seems to be a clever concept commercially but I'm not so sure if this procedure won't backfire sooner or later. After all the trick is to stop when the audience still wanted to see more, not when everybody's so exhausted they just can't take any more. After all this is really the one thing that keeps "Pirates Of The Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest" from being more than a slightly above average summer blockbuster.