Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End
Running time: 168 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13
The third (and hopefully final) installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean series suffers from the misapprehension that more is better.
Sometimes it isnt. And in the case of At Worlds End, more is too much: Too much plot, too much exposition, too much Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom (Zzzzzzz), and at nearly three hours in length, too much movie.
What Pirates doesnt have enough of is Jack Sparrow. Lets be real here: Johnny Depp carried the first movie. It was his portrayal of the swishy, swashbuckling savant Jack Sparrow that made the first movie the hit that it was. It wasnt the love story. It wasnt the special effects. It was Depp. Depp. Depp. … Period.
In this film, there arent enough scenes of Depp doing what he does best, chewing up the scenery as the scheming, bumbling cad we adored from the first film.
Instead, we get a convoluted plot concerning the alliance between the East India Company and Davy Jones and the search for nine pieces of eight (yes, you read that right) and a pirate congress and plots within plots and people sitting around yelling Arrrr! and talking about what theyre supposed to be doing instead of just DOING IT.
But no. For a three-hour pirate movie, its a crime that we have to wait nearly two hours before we see a monkey get shoved into a cannon. A pirate movie should have PIRATE STUFF in it. Not a bunch of talking. And certainly no boring love story especially when the two people in love are portrayed by two of the most dull, emotionless actors on the planet.
Keira Knightly, whos looking more and more like an anorexic catfish every day, thinks that projecting emotion is simply a matter of sucking in ones cheeks. The more she sucks, the more emotion shes supposedly emoting.
Orlando Bloom reads every line as if hed just had a chemical lobotomy performed. Needless to say, SuckFace & Durrrrrr pretty much ruined most of the movie for me.
I cant recommend At Worlds End. It had the potential to be a Great White Shark, but instead, its just a blowfish.
GRADE: D