June 5, 2007 -- Sequels are usually worse than the original movie. The third movie in a series, “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End,” for instance, is usually even worse than the first sequel. Unfortunately, the Pirates series of films is true to that rule of thumb. Each film in the series is worse than the last. The first film was a good, entertaining film. The second was overlong and seemed incomplete. The third film seems endless and still incomplete, even if you wait for that tidbit at the very end of the credits. The series is such box office gold, however, that it will probably spawn yet another sequel. The ending of this latest film certainly left itself open for another sequel. Hollywood is adept at beating a dead horse for as long as it takes for the audience to get sick of it.

“Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End” is a film as long as its title. It seemed as long as the Bush Administration, though admittedly not that much of a disaster. If you were to skip the first two hours of the movie, where it is just getting warmed up, the last half-hour is pretty good, with some real rousing action scenes involving two pirate ships in a pitched battle inside a giant whirlpool. That sequence includes pirates swinging by ropes back and forth between the two ships, engaging in hand-to-hand combat, in addition to the cannon fire, gunfire, swordplay, etc. It is almost worth the price of admission. Unfortunately, if you watch the whole film, you've got to wade through two hours of set up scenes before you get to the big finale. The plot for the first two hours makes no sense at all. Characters come and go for no apparent reason. Some characters die and are brought back from the dead, while others die and stay dead, with no explanation for the difference.

Jack Sparrow (played by Johnny Depp) is rescued from the land of the dead by his loyal crew sailing to the end of the world after him with the aid of charts and a ship stolen from Chinese pirate Sao Feng (played by Chow Yun-Fat). Once they rescue Sparrow, the ship joins a band of pirates intent on finding a way to stop Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander) of the East India Company. Cutler has gained control of the invincible ghost ship, the Flying Dutchman. He is using it to wipe all the pirates off the face of the earth. Sparrow and the other eight pirates of the Brethren Court must unite to stop the Flying Dutchman and the East India fleet from destroying them. The plot, of course, is much more complicated than this outline. It involves numerous double-crosses, a sea-goddess named Calypso, and a plot to rescue a certain member of Davy Jones' (Bill Nighy) crew aboard the Flying Dutchman. It also involves the mysterious keeper of the Pirate Code, one Captain Teague (played by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones rock group, reportedly the inspiration behind Depp's performance as Jack Sparrow in the series).

Many of the actors in the first two movies return for this one, including Depp, Nighy, Hollander, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Stellan Skarsgård and Jonathan Pryce. There is plenty of acting talent in front of the camera, and plenty of great special effects added in post-production. What is lacking is any semblance of a cohesive plot. I've heard that a lot of the problems with the plot are caused by the need to edit the film down to a manageable length. Maybe an expanded version of the film may be released someday on DVD which fills in all the plot holes, but I wouldn't bet on it. This film rates a C.

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Copyright © 2007 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
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