Are you going to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End?

[Aeroplane]

Review: Even Depp can't save clogged 'Pirates'


By Tom Charity
Special to CNN

(CNN) -- It takes an age before Johnny Depp shows his face in "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," and when he does, it's the tip of his nose that looms into screen left, eventually succeeded by a flaring nostril.

I doubt there's been a larger, longer close-up of a proboscis this side of "Seabiscuit," and there's no rhyme or reason for it, really. But our indulgence is rewarded when not one, not two, but an entire crew of digital Depps bounce into view, flouncing and flailing for all they are worth. One even lays an egg.

Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, you may recall (spoiler!), bought a one-way ticket to Davy Jones's Locker when he went down with his ship at the end of the last film, "Dead Man's Chest." Not that death is a terminal condition in this series; before "At World's End" is through, most of the cast will have perished at least once and returned to the fray.

For Sparrow, perdition is to be marooned on the Black Pearl in the middle of a desert without a whisper of a breeze. The doldrums. It's enough to drive a buccaneer to distraction.

He's not the only one.

The entire franchise seems on the verge of collapse, propelled to construct ever more grandiose flights of fancy. Without those sequences, there would be nothing there -- but a movie cannot exist on rollick alone (not by the second sequel anyway). I kept flashing to the image of a doomed mariner furiously bailing out his boat as it sinks inexorably beneath the waves.

The problem is not so much that the energy -- or the invention -- flags. But the audience may. Screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio have been working overtime. Having fabricated an entire supernatural pirate mythology from odds and ends (a theme park here, a Flying Dutchman there), they now feel duty-bound to lay it all out for us as they go.

And the more that is explained, the murkier everything gets.

"World's End" features so many detailed negotiations between charlatans with obscure cross-purposes you head for the exit more confused than when you went in.

Still, it's all as splashy as $250 million can buy, and on occasion the CGI guys conjure something akin to poetry: for example, a sampan gliding through a vast arctic cave, then emerging like a spaceship into an inky black sea reflecting the stars above ("You have to be lost to find a place that's never been found," rationalizes Capt. Barbossa, once again played by Geoffrey Rush).

Or the Black Pearl surfing through the sand on the back of a million crustaceans. Or the climactic sea battle on the cusp of an oceanic whirlpool. Or its wonderful character creations, notably Davy Jones himself (again by the terrific Bill Nighy).

We critics routinely shortchange such wonders, but blockbusters thrive on spectacle, and any movie that can produce a 50-foot woman almost as an afterthought has no worries on that score.

At the same time, it's easier to warm to the vaudevillian Hope-and-Crosby-style comedy director Gore Verbinski keeps trying to smuggle in under the radar, in dozens of throwaway sight gags, madcap verbal non-sequiturs, and slapstick set pieces. Depp is his principal ally, of course, the agent of chaos swanning his way through the heart of the whole shebang.

It's really too bad this wonderful anarchy is swamped by the movie's noisy inconsequence. Fully an hour too long -- 2 3/4 hours! -- and emotionally frigid, "Pirates" is scuppered by nothing so much as its own inflated self-importance.


http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pira...e_caribbean_3/

[GlasgowKiss]

So long as the popcorn box is on your lap ill be there.

[Aeroplane]

Hope you don't mind the hole on the bottom of it.

[???]

yeah i'll see it. i love increasingly-epic money-spinning action trilogies

[GlasgowKiss]

Originally Posted by Aeroplane

Hope you don't mind the hole on the bottom of it.

Thats why im going to be buying the butteriest.

[Aeroplane]

[Fattening Ass]

hah pervs

[Trotskilicious]

almost three hours, i'll pass.

[neopryn]

pretty bad, and i enjoyed the first one and tolerated the second

[Orchestra]

Never ever believe rotten tomatoes.

And no I won't be seeing it.

[Trotskilicious]

i liked the first one after about the third time I saw it it was old and kind of dumb

how is two dudes gonna hijack and sail a brig, really

[ChristHimself!]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

almost three hours, i'll pass.

i was half considering going till i found this out - the second one was way too bloated as it was at about 2 hrs 30... im skipping this unless the wife is desparate to see it

[Trotskilicious]

we need historically accurate movies about pirates

[wHATcOLOR]

im going tonight even though i don't give a shit about it

[Aeroplane]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

we need historically accurate movies about pirates

it's funny you say this because i've been wanting to see or write one for a long time. pirate movies are always stupid shit.

[Trotskilicious]

maybe we could collaborate

[TuralyonW3]

i saw it tonight. it was fun and a great payoff to the other two. pretty amazing special effects. oh and kiera knightley is fucking hot.

[Trotskilicious]

i like her but she doesn't really do anything for me, she's way too thin.

[TuralyonW3]

yeah that's true her face is gorgeous though

[Boycott Graceland]

i can't believe roeper gave it a thumb up

he should have his thumbs revoked

[redbull]

I liked this quite a bit, fuck you guys.

[Boycott Graceland]

i can't believe redbull gave it a thumb up

he should have his thumbs revoked

[Fattening Ass]

jack sparrow is a lil pansy bitch

[Fattening Ass]

worst role johnny depp has ever played

[Trotskilicious]

i keep hearing how great bill nighy is as davy jones

i think davy jones looks extra super cool but i never saw the second one, i heard it was long too. i think they should have stuck to doing silly little adventures rather than having some kind of TRILOGY nailed to the first movie.

[Boycott Graceland]

how much is keith richards supposed to be in this? or is it just a cameo?

[Fattening Ass]

is he playing a skeleton or something

[Trotskilicious]

Originally Posted by Fattening Ass

worst role johnny depp has ever played

that's a little dramatic

[Boycott Graceland]

no, he's playing an unintelligible drunk

[Fattening Ass]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

that's a little dramatic

yeah just a lil