Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Review by Loc

When Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl first came out, I didn’t budge. A pirate movie would be bad. A pirate flick based on a Disney ride, so much worse. Then a strange thing happened, I saw the flick. Wow, just, wow. It was good in the way summer movies are supposed to be good: lots of fun, rollicking action, doable plot, clever touches of writing, nice performances. Ah, if only all popcorn flicks could entertain so well. So, the sequel had weighty expectations, so weighty that Disney decided to film two sequels back-to-back and usher in a new era of swashbuckling. Quick hit: oh how the mighty have fallen into the traps of mediocrity.

Yup, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest fails to deliver the high adventure of its predecessor. And rest assured, it’s not for a lack of effort. However, POTC:2 falls for its own success, trying to outdo the most beloved aspects of the first to entertain and enthrall. It’s like the writing team went back and watched the first one several dozen times, took notes on the most successful spots, and regurgitated them back in hopes of catching lightning one more time. When that happens, the story is manufactured at best, the action sequences are over-juiced to the point of parody, and the movie suffers from drawn-out plotlines that never address the plot. Sucks to be so disappointing.

But what do I really think about the movie, you might ask? Well little one, I think I sat through over two hours and thirty minutes of slow pirate-ing. In fact, I would say that I felt every minute of that marathon, not a moment went by where I escaped into the mad-capped world of Jack Sparrow. And that my friends, is a damn shame. After falling so unconditionally for the first, the second ended up being bland and not engaging, the dreaded two deathmarks in BMF vocabulary.

First up: plot and story, or bad and boring as I found them in the movie. The first film capitalized on a very strong, solid story. Some cursed pirates looking for their salvation, their solution surrounding our two young stars in somewhat believable coincidence, and the larger-than-life Jack Sparrow gluing it all together with witty charm and questionable mischievousness. This flick, none of those components came together, nothing melded, and that’s because the basic story itself was undeveloped. Apparently the legend of Davy Jones is true, but what that legend entails is never fully explained. Sure, we get the old fairytale explanation, but the stuff about his appearance, his ship, his curse, his Krakken, just sort of thrown out there for you to catch. And while I’m happy they didn’t stoop to treating the audience like ignorant illiterates, I don’t believe that was their main purpose. Rather, they chose not to explain anything cause it would require too much work, they weren’t clever enough to provide a tidy backstory like the first, so they just threw the action at you to redirect your attention. Argggh.

Second: let’s talk about the action. Some big pieces, like the giant wheel sword fight and the cannibal cannonball run. And for what it’s worth, those were decent. Pretty big spectacle and all, but really, kind of forced and shoved into our faces. This is where the lightning catching failed, there was no magic to the scenes, just the transparency of the writers trying to outdo themselves with fantastical sequences that didn’t really deliver. Nothing was natural, everything looked and felt staged.

Third: performances, and really there’s only one we need to discuss. Kiera Knightely, Orlando Bloom, whatever, you get what you get from them. Bill Nighy as Davy Jones was pretty good, you know the guy is a good actor when you can see some semblance of emotion under a squid head. However, let us get back to Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow, the pirate who crushed box office records. In the first film, Sparrow was a cunning bloke, a man who played all the angles while disarming other’s with his seemingly drunken incompetence, he was a pirate that worked. In part two, he’s closer to a caricature of the character he created. He’s amped up the quirkiness and the flamboyance, he seems much closer to incompetent than cunning, and he really doesn’t do much to command the show. Granted, his actions are a reflection of the writing, which is another example of skimming the surface of prior success in hopes of recreating it for the present. Jack Sparrow worked because he was a wily, shrewd pirate who masked those strengths with playful incorrigibility. In the sequel, he’s just another puppet to run around and dance for the kids, dance clown dance!

So there you have it, broken down in three easy sections: Why does Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest fail as a movie? I won’t even mention the fourth-grade cliffhanger meant to build up excitement for next summer’s installment. Like most movies this summer, this flick failed to overwhelm in any facet of the game. Sure, it’s a decent thing to sit through, another run-of-the-mill popcorn flick. Ah, sometimes it’s hard to live up to your predecessor. Looking back, I liken my reaction to this sequel as what I initially expected from the first film, a fun pirate flick but not much more. Out of 100 souls indebted to Davy Jones, Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest unleashes 49 wayward sailors. With this sequel being about half as good as the first, I hope the third installment doesn’t check in with a 25% BMF approval rating.