2006 / 150 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

Hollywood seems increasingly eager to churn out fun summer blockbusters. The studios have sunk all their money into making these franchises and remakes and action-packed spectacles…and yet they seem to have completely forgotten how to make one of the damned things.

Take, for example, the second film in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise. I loved the original film precisely because it was one of the few summer blockbusters that remembered and embraced the summer blockbuster’s original mission statement: to provide fun at any cost. The original pirate had a unique, wonderful creation of a main character (Capt. Jack Sparrow played with droll wit and audacity by the incomparable Johnny Depp) a streamlined plot that took itself just seriously enough, fun special effects, plenty of action and a romance that while not revolutionary worked within the framework of the film. It also had charm, wit, a delightful swashbuckling flair and a lush, romantic, storybook production design. It was fresh. It was exotic. And it was a hell of a lot of fun.

The exotic flair of the first film is now standard operating procedure as the second film opens. I am happy to report that the baroque production design and visual flair that made the original “Pirates” such a feast for the eyes remains in tact. There are portions of this film that are achingly gorgeous. The production designers are to be commended for each and every set.

Sadly, the members of the production design team are the only ones working up to the par of the first film.

Everyone else seems to have forgotten what made us love “Pirates” in the first place. The plot of the first was simple, breezy and a little silly. But that was all right. The plot did its job, providing a perfect framework for such eccentric goodies as Depp’s performance, a great deal of swashbuckling action, and some nifty special effects. This time the filmmakers have provided both too much plot and not enough. I will explain. The film’s plot is a convoluted, labyrinthine exercise involving baddies from the East Indian Trading Company, an enchanted compass, a chest containing the heart of a diabolical otherworldly fiend, a special key, a disgraced commodore, and a paternal reunion. This is too much plot, and the film spends way too much time untangling it. I understand that they felt the need to devise a plotline complex enough to run the course of two sequels but, like “The Matrix Reloaded”, they seem to have gone overboard and smothered any sense of fun the film might otherwise have been able to generate. The movie has no time to be fun because it has to spend so much time explaining what the hell is going on. The movie founders under the weight of exposition, which wouldn’t be so bad if the exposition was interesting. Unfortunately, it is not. I, for one, did not care about a single element of the film’s storyline. It just didn’t grab me. There’s no hook here, nothing original or emotionally compelling.

Also, the film takes too many diversions that aren’t very diverting. Too much screen time is wasted on the Island of Wacky Cannibals. This is material we’ve seen in a thousand similar films (white man becomes god of backward tribe, tribe is full of cannibals, said cannibals are complete morons) and the film does nothing to distinguish this material. The only reason it exists is to provide a pointless, yet admittedly amusing, action sequences involving large round cages. The characters imprisoned in these cage balls make an escape that reminded me of watching a hamster manipulate one of those big exercise balls. This part is amusing, but it does absolutely nothing to further the plot, which wouldn’t be such a problem if the filmmakers hadn’t made the plot so damned important.

A large part of screen time is also, unfortunately, devoted to the villains aboard The Flying Dutchman, a cursed ship captained by Davy Jones. Neither Davy Jones nor any of his crew is very intimidating. Even worse, the special effects used to bring them to life look downright silly. How scary is a guy with a conch shell for a head? Not very. Neither Davy nor any of his crew manage to generate much menace (Davy does the best, with his “Phantom of the Opera”-style organ playing and his tentacled moustache). They’re about as intimidating as Looney Toons villains. In the original, Geoffrey Rush managed to generate a real sense of menace. Also, Rush’s Capt. Barbossa had actual motivation. His character was well developed. Davy Jones is evil because…well, he’s evil. There’s some mumbo-jumbo about a failed romance or something, but that it’s never developed. Maybe it will be developed in the sequel, but that doesn’t help this movie any.

The heroes don’t fare much better than the villains, I’m afraid. What little interest we in the audience had in Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner character is now gone. He got the girl at the end of the first movie. Watching a guy try to keep the girl isn’t all that exciting. The filmmakers don’t give us much reason to root for him. Keira Knightley is also underused and underdeveloped. She comes off as unrealistic (though, considering her lack of breasts, the fact that she’s able to pass herself off as a male crewmember is entirely too believable) and shrewish. She’s irritating. But the biggest shock is Johnny Depp’s Capt. Jack Sparrow. He just isn’t given enough to do. Unlike the first movie, he has no great lines to wrap his droll accent around and he’s barely a participant in the plot. His dialogue is a series of overly ornate, overly complex nonsense that has no point and little in the way of flair. His mannerisms are meant to be the joke, but we all got used to those the first time around. Perhaps the movie’s biggest flaw is that it gives Depp nothing new to work with. He’s the star of the movie and he’s largely pushed into the background.

The last ten or fifteen minutes are actually quite good. They’re so good that I’m actually looking forward the next “Pirates” sequel. Hopefully that movie will eschew the exposition and dense plotting altogether and just provide the fun and action that is sorely lacking in this movie. There are a couple of action sequences, but they’re few and far between and, when they do come, they’re not as exhilarating as anything in the first film. There’s none of the invention and kamikaze glee that “Pirates of the Caribbean” so elegantly demonstrated. The first movie had a certain spring in its step. That carries over to the beginning of this movie and resurfaces at the end but is mostly drowned by excessive length and too many dull subplots. The movie is as ornate and convoluted as most of Captain Jack’s dialogue and just as hollow.

The last fifteen minutes left me wanting more. The preceding two hours and fifteen minutes left me wanting less.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.