Somewhat disappointing, but still worth seeing

Rating: 6/10 (30 July 2006)

To begin with, the plot was too incoherent. Why was Jack in a floating coffin in the beginning? Why did he owe Davy Jones his soul? (By which I mean, what did he promise to do in those 13 years that he failed to do?) Did Elizabeth fall for Jack, or not? That last question i'm assuming they left intentionally ambiguous. But a little more explanation on some of the other stuff would be nice.
It was *way* too gross. If nothing else, they had way way way too many shots of the crows pecking at the men in the cages at the beginning. It was completely unnecessary. The kraken was rather cool, and Davy Jones i can concede was interesting, but the crew members were not. They were gross and completely unrealistic looking. Add to that the fact that there was not enough screen time of Jack just being Jack, they overplayed the overly verbose speech habits (primarily in the beginning), the incomprehensible dice game (tho that may just be me being slow), and the fact that the soundtrack (although still beautiful) sounded like the original one recycled with a couple of organ pieces thrown in, and I'm left feeling a bit let down by this one.
My friend would also like me to add that the accents were occasionally difficult to understand (which I disagree with, the only thing I ever had trouble with was Barbosa's "me holds are bursting with swag" line in the first movie), and it was too long (which I do agree with).
However, there were some awesome fight scenes, some very amusing jokes (especially those that were throwbacks to the first movie), and a couple of incredibly hot actors, and one very hot actress, so the movie was not terrible by any stretch of the imagination. It simply lacked *something* which the first movie had, that made it worth going back and watching over and over. I enjoyed it, but ultimately walked away feeling more let down than impressed.