Only moderately entertaining

Rating: 6/10 (31 December 2006)

For the life of me, I can't figure out why this movie made the kind of money it did except for the fact that it didn't have much decent competition.
I won't rehash much of the movie here, save to say that it really, really would have benefited from judicious editing; 20-30 minutes could have easily been cut, making a faster, tighter, and much more entertaining film.
Did the fans of this film really not find themselves rolling their eyes when the large wheel broke loose and started rolling through the forest? How about when Jack magically appears back on board the Black Pearl despite having just been shown halfway to shore in his rowboat? For that matter when the rifle got knocked out of Keira's hands?
This film suffered from the main problems that Back to the Future 2 did, namely it didn't resolve anything and simply served as a 2.5 hour trailer for the third film. The filmmakers forgot that a sequel needs to serve as a complete, entertaining film on its OWN. IMHO, that is the biggest hazard of the "make parts two and three back to back" philosophy of modern film-making; all involved are SO aware of what happens in part three, part two loses its own identity.
Frankly I found myself expecting that THIS would be where part two ended every five minutes for the last 45 minutes of the film, and clock watching isn't what should happen when viewing a truly good film.