Painfully boring

Rating: 1/10 (9 July 2006)

I really disliked this film. The main reason? It was boring. Terribly terribly boring. Apparently it was 150 minutes, but it felt like 400. Lots happened. Too much happened, really - it was as though they stuck a collection of unrelated possible plots and action sequences into a tombola machine and then pulled several out at random, and glued them together end to end. With so much going on, it should have been exciting and entertaining but was instead, confusing, complicated and not engaging. Ah, if only as many hours had been spent on the script and the plot as were apparently spent on the CGI.
The only real 'character' in it this time is Norrington, who is now a bitter ex-Commodore and all the grubbier and more interesting for it - but everyone else from the first film is back, in the same old roles, but with no further character development at all. Come on Hollywood, have you forgotten? We need personalities! It's hard to care about one-dimensional characters.
The first film had 2 strong, interesting characters - Jack and Barbosa. This one still has Captain Jack, but he's far less entertaining than he was first time round, does less, says less, has fewer gags and doesn't come across anything like as forcefully as he did in the first film. It's a minor point, but costume wise, he's cleaner, his clothes are less tatty, he's got whiter teeth and very neatly-rolled dreads. Continuity?
Other things that grated: Will and Elizabeth were, if possible, even more wooden than last time. The film lacked the humour and originality of the first film, and was almost completely chuckle-free - and any jokes were re-cycled, less-funny versions of jokes from the first film. The gratuitous CGI monsters were a half-human, half-seafood mess and looked ridiculous rather than what was (presumably) supposed to be scary. Why does "Davy Jones" have a Scottish accent? If they have to give him a regional accent, shouldn't it have been Welsh? :>
I probably shouldn't let a throwaway summer blockbuster annoy me so much, but I simply was not entertained by this in the way that I was entertained by the first film. It's a very poor followup.