Theatrical Review of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

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A buck to anybody who can remember the plot details of "Pirates 2." If you're like me, you probably weren't sure just what was going on during the film, and you forgot what little you did understand about two minutes after leaving the theater or turning off the disc. I mention this because "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" is not so much a sequel to "Pirates 2" as it is a continuation. It's a little gimmick that filmmakers picked up after the success of "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions," where the filmmakers produced one long movie, divided it in two, and released them a year apart. Double your pleasure; double your profit. Two for the price of one ain't a bad deal.

The problem with this twofer gambit is that you need to have enough story to sustain what is essentially a four-hour or longer film, or it won't work; and neither "The Matrix" nor "Pirates" has anything like that. So, instead, what we get in both cases is a two-hour film padded out to over four hours, then broken in two. It didn't stop audiences from flocking to theaters and buying the DVDs to watch them, but popularity alone doesn't make a great movie. "Pirates 2 and 3" are mostly fluff, much of it huffy, puffy, and noisy, held together by Johnny Depp's off-balance pirate performance and a boatload of CGI special effects.

OK, forget the buck, and I'll remind you where we are. If you were really attentive, you'll remember that in the last episode, a new magistrate, the evil Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), had come to Port Royale and arrested both Will (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) for helping Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp) to escape; and nothing Elizabeth's father, Governor Weatherby Swann (Jonathan Pryce), said could save them. Except Beckett made one concession: If Will agreed to find Sparrow and bring back his compass, Beckett would free them all. Huh? A compass? So off went Will chasing after Sparrow; off went Elizabeth chasing after Will; off went Norrington (Jack Davenport), whom most of us had forgotten about, chasing after everybody; and off went Sparrow chasing dry land because the demonic Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) was chasing him. And all of them eventually went off chasing a key that unlocked a dead man's chest that only the compass could find.

After what seemed an eternity, episode two ended with Captain Jack being swallowed by a sea monster, and that's where "At World's End" takes up. If there was anything in episode two that seemed confusing, it only gets worse here, where the film introduces us to even more plot complications and even more characters, plus one old hand who was missing from most of the second installment, Capt. Barbossa, played by Geoffrey Rush doing his best Robert Newton ("Treasure Island") imitation.

Frankly, I found the plot of "Pirates 3" almost incomprehensible, but as far as I could decipher it, the voodoo witchy-woman Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris, using a Jamaican accent that could have used subtitles) has resurrected Barbossa, whom Captain Jack had shot; and the Pirate Lords are getting together to combat Beckett and the world-dominating East India Company that he represents. Meanwhile, Beckett has enlisted the help of Davy Jones and his crew of the undead to destroy the pirates, using a promise to return Jones's heart to him if he cooperates. Then we find Captain Jack resurrected as well, after spending a little time in the next life; and as usual he's trying to get his ship, the Black Pearl, back, which is an even greater problem now that Barbossa has returned from the dead and wants the old boat for himself. Governor Swann is back, too, reluctantly aiding Beckett, who is hanging everybody in sight who has any connection to piracy; and also back is the duplicitous Norrington, whom Beckett has now promoted to Admiral of the fleet. Furthermore, Will and Elizabeth (remember them?) are in there somewhere, Will looking for his father, Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgard), who is dead and aboard Davy Jones's boat, the poor guy looking more like "Barnacle" Bill than ever; and Elizabeth looking for Will and her father and more or less just hanging out and looking beautiful.

Among the new characters in the brew is pirate Captain Sao Feng (not to be confused with our own pirate, Eddie Feng), Sao played by Chow Yun-Fat; although, like most of the other actors, you can hardly recognize him under a ton of makeup. At least he has a slightly bigger part as one of the Pirate Lords than the cameo afforded the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards as Captain Teague, Jack's father. After years of Depp explaining that he used Richards' stage demeanor as an inspiration for his own prancing around as Capt. Jack, the filmmakers were finally able to bring Richards into the picture. It was a clever idea, especially as Depp has said that he considers Richards a kind of pirate character in real life, anyway, but Richards doesn't get much screen time.

The movie is long, very, very long, almost twenty minutes longer that "Pirates 2," which was seven minutes longer than "Pirates 1." At close to three hours, "Pirates 3" overstays its welcome by plenty, a problem exacerbated by the fact that the plot doesn't even kick in until the film is well over half finished. The movie devotes its first hour or more to getting everybody back together and showing off how much the Industrial Light and Magic team can do with CGI special effects. What with all the spectacular FX, elaborate sets, continuous fighting, incessant clamor, and Hans Zimmer's musical track turned up to the threshold of pain when the screenplay has little else to offer, it's a wonder the filmmakers could squeeze any semblance of story line into the thing.

At one point Admiral Norrington takes a cue from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and wonders if all of these unintelligible events aren't just being made up as they go along. Like the rest of the audience, I'm sure, I was wondering the same thing myself. It seems like the scriptwriters just kept tagging one thing on to another, without much concern for logic or reason but simply with an eye toward continuous action (and talk, lots of talk). This makes sense if you understand that the writers had not yet finished the script when shooting began.

Then, too, poor Will and Elizabeth, whose love affair was one of the central ingredients in the first "Pirates," hardly look at one another in this installment, at least not until the very end. Therefore, not only don't we get logic or reason, we don't even get romance. Oh, well, we shouldn't expect much logic or reason in a comedy adventure, anyhow, and at least Will and Elizabeth have good teeth, among the only people in the picture who do.

When we finally get to the end, we find that the filmmakers may have yet another sequel in store for us. Certainly, they leave the plot open to the possibility, although if you stick around until the closing credits are over, you may find the sequel situation more complicated than you thought.

For all its silly goings-on, senseless violence, and perpetual, empty motion, however, there are a few pleasures one may find. Not the least of them is the film's gorgeous look, its admittedly colorful characters, and its high good humor from Depp and Rush, both of whom are essentially comic personalities.

As a result, the few pleasures may be enough to carry the film for die-hard "Pirates" fans, but for me even Depp and Rush got old after a while. Although, to be fair, we really don't see all that much of them. Capt. Jack, for instance, doesn't make an appearance until well into the film and then disappears for long stretches, which presents another problem: The filmmakers never seem to make up their minds who the main character is, so they afford everybody in the movie a little space, thereby diluting everyone's part.

Here's what I'd like to see happen next: I'd like to see director Gore Verbinski make a Director's Cut out of "Pirates 2 and 3." I'd like to see him sit down at his editing console, combine the two movies into a single, five-hour film, and then trim it back to a little over two hours. I'm sure he has a good two hours of adventure and laughs in the pair of films, and I'm sure I would find one, good, concise, well-focused, tightly knit movie fun to watch. But I realize this will never happen. People want more and longer for their money, just as they want bigger cars and bigger houses. "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" gives most people exactly what they're looking for. For me, what I got out of it was mostly a sore butt.

5/10

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