Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

The pirates of the Caribbean are back, and of course I'm not talking about the Disneyland ride but instead the sequel to the very (and deservedly) successful 2003 film of the same name.

In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, rogue pirate Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) owes a blood debt to a certain squid-faced pirate names Davy Jones; you may have heard of his locker. In the process of repaying that, most of the characters from the first film make their way into the implausibly convoluted storyline, including the comely Kiera Knightley as plucky engenue Elizabeth Swann and the somewhat less fetching (but just as delicious) Jonathan Pryce as her beleaguered father.

The plot of the second Pirates of the Caribbean is more or less the same as in the first film (and more or less irrelevant). The characters are always searching for something: a person, an island, a key, a chest, a good cell phone plan, you name it, Sparrow and Co. have probably looked for it and eventually found it after various suitably entertaining misadventures.

There is a feeling of déjà vu hanging over the proceedings, largely because the plot is essentially a series of loosely linked episodic sketches. Silly plot twists and turns jerk the characters and plot to and fro to various pirate hellholes throughout the Caribbean, including an eerie swamp. In said swamp, Sparrow must consult a voodoo woman (who looks suspiciously like Miss Cleo minus a few pounds and after a weekend binge) for some sort of information and magic something or other. Then there's the strange (and nearly pointless) episode where Sparrow is briefly the leader of a cannibal tribe....

There’s a lot of Disney-esque slapstick, screwball visual gags, double-takes, and pratfalls in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Several extended scenes involve the main characters in giant, round cages being battered around like pinballs, or swordfighting atop a giant moving wheel as it rolls down a hill. This cartoony aspect to the film is fine but is overdone and superfluous. In fact there are several scenes which are visually amazing at first but wear out their welcome; another is when a giant, tentacled beast called the Kraken attacks ships.

(Shameless plug: I discuss the real-life basis for the Kraken myth in my recently published and well-reviewed book Lake Monster Mysteries!).

The visuals of monstrous, suckered tentacles battering the ship and snatching away hapless sailors are amazing (and scary), but lose their effectiveness after a while. About half an hour of the film could have been left on the cutting room floor and the audience would be none the wiser.

The production design is amazing, and the film is gorgeous. Being a Jerry Bruckheimer production, the sets are lavish and the action is broad.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is not as good as the first film, which was fresher and more tightly written, but it is undeniably a fun romp. The series will be a trilogy, and the third entry will feature a cameo by a certain legendarily hard-living and decrepit rocker on whom Depp partly based his Jack Sparrow character.