Pirates!

Here it is, perhaps the newest movie to be reviewed so far. It just barely came out the three days before I am writing this, so I managed to see it on opening weekend (thanks LilPickle). But as with many sequels that appear from Hollywood, this movie is shrouded in disappointment. It still sports swashbuckling-a-plenty, and enormous amounts of fun and entertainment, but it really just seemed to lack. A lot of the attitude and so called “heart” of the first movie simply didn’t carry over to the sequel. Don’t get me wrong though, this movie was not bad. And certainly worth seeing and as soon as it comes to video I will be buying it. But it’s just simply not as good as the prior blockbuster smash. Directed by Gore Verbinski and still starring Johnny Depp and Keira Knightly and Orlando bloom (as well as many other names from the first that I was pleasantly surprised to see) this movie will certainly keep you entertained, even if you can barely understand what some of the characters are saying, and the quantity of action seems almost too excessive.

Plot

Captain Jack Sparrow sets out to discover a way to save his soul from the dreaded Davy Jones, to whom he owes a debt. Normally to do this he would use his compass that shows him what he wants the most, but it seems to not be working in this movie. So in order to save his soul, he uses William Turner (Orlando Bloom) as collateral with Davy Jones, and uses Elizabeth Swan to show him the way to a chest containing Davy Jones heart. Of course, nothing ever seems to work out for Captain Jack, and what seems a simple task quickly balloons into a full scale adventure, with no shortage of action. However, the plot is completely unresolved in this movie. Somehow in this movie’s 2 hours and 30 minutes of length, the filmmakers managed to only create questions in the plot, and leave you hanging horribly in the end of the movie with more question than when you entered the theater. And that really pisses me off. I like a good cliffhanger as much as the next person, but in my opinion, a cliffhanger should at least answer a few of your questions, and not leave you with more than when you came in.

Visual

Here the sequel is significantly better than the first movie. In the first, there were many places that the CGI was just less than the up-to-snuff standards common with current day filmmaking technology. But Dead Man’s Chest certainly does not leave you questioning the quality of CGI, even the giant squid scenes are so believable it almost looks like they used live action animals instead of CG. Davy Jones himself was a great deal of CG, as was his crew. And it was so well performed that you really barely notice what CG you can actually see. More key visuals along the same lines of the first movie are still present here, including a trip to the island of Tortuga, which is basically one big brawl all day and all night. Plus, the backgrounds in the islands and main lands are excellent, and you can’t believe even for a minute that you are sitting in the movie theater and not really there with the characters.

Audio

Here’s another point that this movie excels. Another excellent revision to an already fantastic theme song is key here. All through the movie they play a song nearly identical to the first movie, and just as the music in the first set the mood, so does the song here. In every scene it is employed, the main theme either increases the idea of the pirate’s life, or brings you down to the depths with Davy Jones himself. The sound effects are also excellent, but then again I did see it in the theater, so perhaps in the DVD format the sound effects won’t be quite as good, but I somehow doubt that when comparing with the sound effects present in the first DVD.

Acting

Johnny Depp is once again in very rare form, and is most excellent in this role just as in the first. I honestly don’t think that anyone else could be Captain Jack Sparrow with anywhere near the effectiveness of Depp. Keira Knightly is hot as hell just as before, although I was a little disappointed in her role here. Instead of the pure honest governor’s daughter she played in the first movie, here she plays a slightly trampy pirate-wanabe who just doesn’t have the same heart and soul as I was expecting based on the role in “Curse of the Black Pearl.” Also, it seemed like just about everyone was mumbling in this movie, some of the characters could barely be heard through their fancy “Old-English” speak. And the voodoo witch doctor Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris) has an accent so thick that you have to strain to try and understand her.

Summary

Lay off the action a little bit and spread on some more plot and character development and answer a few more questions before the cliffhanger, and this movie increases in quality three-fold. But as it is, there is just too much action and too little everything else. But again don’t get me wrong, I think the action (when it was properly planned) was beautifully executed and well performed. It just seemed like the swashbuckling was nonstop through the whole flick, leaving little time to sit back and breathe in the two and a half hour behemoth. So based on this, I simply cannot give this movie as good of a score as the prior movie received, so all in all I give Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest a visually stunning 3 Aaaaaarrrgh matey’s out of 5