A largely convoluted, but occasionally engaging mess.

Rating: 4/10 (6 July 2006)

Where the first installment instantly gripped us with a brief hint of a ghost-story followed by the single best introduction of a character ever shown on film, this mess begins with a series of hacked together scenes with almost not a single laugh (or even action sequence) to be seen.
This trend continues for some time - the beloved Captain Jack Sparrow is not up to his usual self. It's hard to decide what was messier - the dialogue (which gets only marginally better throughout the film) or the action sequences, which only had a handful of 'Cool' or 'Surprising' moments.
Where before, we had witty dialogue punctuated by clichéd but well-choreographed action sequences, we're now left with a few reasonable lines, one or sight gags (of many) that actually worked, and perhaps one or two memorable action sequences.
Also missing here is a villain we might be interested in. We were engaged when watching Geoffrey Rush as the powerful, unhappy and driven Barbossa... but poor Bill Nighy has nothing to go on here, so I don't think even a better performance would really have helped.
If someone had taken the few good concepts and images from this script and beaten it about a bit more, this might have been less of a snoozer.
There's no magic here.
My rating: 2/5 stars - vaguely entertaining.