No heart . . .

Rating: 6/10 (9 July 2006)

"Dead Man's Chest" is an overly-ambitious jumble of characters, settings, and effects that fail to deliver a story worth the journey... The characters we thought we knew from the first film, are lost in hard-to-follow plot lines. Like Jack's compass, they don't know what they really want. To add to confusion, there are several passages of dialogue that were impossible for the audience to understand. Captain Jack is still the man to watch, there is wonderful acting delivered by Johnny Depp. He, along with Bill Nighy as Davy Jones, are the saving grace of the film. But even Captain Jack seems distracted enough to throw his compass out of whack. Poor editing puts characters in one place after another with no clear explanation why. An example, for what purpose did Jack and his crew sail to Cannibal Island? I'm still perplexed as to how the characters wound up in the final scene. It is unfortunate that the special effects overpower character development in "Dead Man's Chest". While Davy Jone's octopus face is amazing to behold, the Kraken's tentacles are overdone. If more attention had been paid to the story line, these effects might have enhanced this film. As it is, it is a movie without a heart in more ways than one.