Not what I was suspecting

Rating: 6/10 (8 July 2006)

After watching the first Pirates movie a couple years back I was psyched to see a repeat on screen this summer. As a film maker I take into consideration all sorts of things that many other movie goers might not really think about too heavily such as lighting, editing, CGI, writing and plot development. The first Pirates movie had some of the best cinematography I have seen in recent years. Dead Man's Chest however didn't repeat it's spectacular art direction and cinematography seen in the first film. My biggest complaint was the CGI used for the main "bad guys". The CGI characters just weren't "believable". The textures were off, the lighting didn't match up, even the water for the opening sequence looked more like liquid metal than water to me. I noticed the same problems with the first Pirate movie, but this movie relied on CGI so much to carry it that it really "sunk" the movie (man I feel corny).
The writing was a big disappointment this time around. Either the actors didn't make it believable, or the writers were trying to push some new ideas too hard. To avoid spoiling the plot I'm going to redirect subjects... The overall length of the film left me anxious at the end to finally get it over with. The climax point comes and then you are left in your chair asking yourself "what now"? Rather than dragging it out to finish off the story they leave you hanging for next year's Pirate release to finish the story from this release. It's the Matrix all over again!
Seeing how many kids were in the audience and taking into consideration that this is a Disney film I was surprised at how much suggested violence there is in this movie. There's one shot that pulls away just as a bunch of captives are about to be killed on their knees. Not something that I would complain about, but Disney usually doesn't let any content of this sort on their films (they usually re-brand it as Miramax or Touchstone).