Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)

Overall rating from 1 to 100: 59

O Masterpiece (95-100)
O Excellent (75-94)
O Good video rental (60-74)
X Merely OK (50-59)
O Pure mediocrity (30-49)
O Medusa: don't watch (1-29)

Review by Jason Pyles / May 29, 2007

Note: If you haven’t seen “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” (2006), then I recommend that you maintain your good fortune. Nevertheless, if you still plan to subject yourself to it, wait until you’ve seen that movie before reading this review.

This so-called “Summer of Sequels” is giving me a complex. I feel like such a critical, crotchety meanie. But “Spider-Man 3” and “Shrek the Third” were truly disappointing. And I must stand fast and hold true because I know what good movies are. Remember “Frequency,” for example?

Hollywood has chosen to reproduce its tried and true lucrative formulas. That’s fine, but let’s keep up the quality. These last two “Pirates” movies couldn’t touch the first one, even if you added them together. Trying to follow “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” feels like this: (Read with a pirate voice.)

I’m Skipper Bottson, and this is me matey, Melky Antigone. Years ago the curse of the Delphi yielded 14 of 13 magpies for the takin’. Arrrrgh. If we travel to RoShamBo via skeeter shoals, then we can claim their nettles and kirtlings and free the Santars. Savvy?

Are you ready to quit reading yet? Yeah, that’s what it’s like to watch “At World’s End.” Filming on this third installment reportedly began before the script was written. If this is true (and I believe it is), then that explains a lot. This movie appears to be one of those “let’s make it up as we go along” projects.

And what happened to Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow character? To prove to you that even the filmmakers were aware of this deficiency, we are given scenes with multiple Captains Jack Sparrow to try to compensate — but to no avail.

This is my best possible attempt at a plot summary: Captain Jack Sparrow is still “beyond dead” in a mysterious underworld where his body and soul is taken to an eternal punishment. His rescue from there is a priority. Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) is still a menace, along with the Royal Fleet and the unscrupulous Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander). Elizabeth Swan (Keira Knightley) is becoming a much tougher (albeit less credible — not because she’s a woman, but because she never closes her mouth) pirate than Will Turner (Orlando Bloom). Both are estranged.

And basically all of the pirates team up to battle Davy Jones and the Royal Fleet, which gives us double-cross upon double-cross until we don’t care anymore.

But the box office profits already refute my review. Many fans will, too. Sure, it’s flashy, showy and has elements of fun, despite its long runtime. The special effects are impressive, as always, but that only redeems so much.

My wife’s condemning comment about the second movie of this trilogy was that it had “too many crustaceans.” Well, if that’s a scale for assessment then this movie is the worst of the three.

But to me, the only reason to see “At World’s End” (and this is why I consider it marginally better than “Dead Man’s Chest”), is to see more of Geoffrey Rush’s Captain Barbossa. Oh, and maybe “Jack,” the monkey.

The majority of moviegoers will probably like “At World’s End.” But I take comfort in knowing that it was also the majority who thought the world was flat; it’s ironic that this movie seems to believe these falsehoods, too.

Directed by Gore Verbinski
Johnny Depp / Geoffrey Rush / Keira Knightley
168 min. Action / Adventure
MPAA: PG-13 (for intense sequences of action/adventure violence and some frightening images)

Copyright 2007.
JP0119 : 517