Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

I was one of apparently four people worldwide who thought the first Pirates movie was overrated, overlong and lacking in excitement. Excepting the brilliant Johnny Depp, I honestly could see nothing to recommend about that poorly scripted, special effects laden chaotic amusement park ride of a film.

Thankfully Dead Man’s Chest is a little better. A lot better in fact. Though it’s still ridiculously overlong (aren’t all the anticipated big budget outings these days?), there are fewer boring patches and more importantly some fantastic action sequences. Gore Verbinski showed us way back in 1997 that he was a master of physical action comedies with Mousehunt, and it’s good to see that he finally gets to put his skills to use. For all the swashbuckling zest of the first Pirates film, there were no memorable action scenes, whereas Dead Man’s Chest intelligently puts most of its energy into several big set pieces that are thrilling and memorable in their use of cause and effect.

The special effects are surprisingly good, as I was even able to suspend disbelief when it came to Davy Jones and his crew. As is often the case, however, the filmmakers get just a little too ambitious in the last few scenes and bombard us with some awful CGI/green screen moments.

Depp, Bloom and Knightley are all in fine form, and while they spend less time delivering some of the more pathetic lines of the original, there are a few too many reprised jokes (though not as bad as whenever Mike Myers makes a sequel). Naomie Harris and a very wet Stellan Skarsgård are welcome additions to the cast, even if the former’s accent as the mystic Tia Dalma is a little hard to understand. It seems that the film makes use of any character we’ve previously met who isn’t yet dead (and even some that are) thus we have the likes of Jack Davenport reprising roles that aren’t really that necessary. The monkey, on the other hand, is funny.

The plot seems to be moving more and more into fantasy and farther from the basic pirate mythos, and one wonders if this would be the case if The Lord of the Rings hadn’t proved such a success. I for one would like to see some solid fantasy films alongside all the kids’ flicks and comic adaptations currently cramming our screens (maybe ‘Lord Foul’s Bane’, or even ‘Magician’, surely there’s a market out there?).

This is part of the Pirates franchise, and thus still an exercise in excess. The motto seems to be ‘more is more (but let’s add a little more)’, and while the visual overload didn’t bother me as much as it did first time around, Dead Man’s Chest could still have done with some trimming.

Thankfully however, the main attraction – Captain Jack Sparrow – hasn’t jumped the shark yet, and whilst the sequel relies more on physical humour than quips, it’s Depp’s performance that demands the most attention. But when has he ever delivered a poor performance?

A worthy sequel.