"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" Review

by Jeff McGinnis, Lead Usher

**1/2 stars (out of four)
165 minutes, starts Thursday, May 24th


I do not claim to recall the details of every ad campaign with crystal clarity, but I seem to remember the commercials for "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" saying something to the effect of, "All the answers will be revealed." Well, I still have questions. A lot of them. I am not at all sure what exactly happened here, but the third installment in the wildly successful and entertaining "Pirates" series is just this side of a total mess.

This is a film in serious need of an editor - not of the traditional film variety, but one who would read and pare down text, namely the script by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. These are the same writers who have worked on all three "Pirates" movies, though two additional writers worked on "The Curse of the Black Pearl," the first and best of the series. I'm beginning to wonder if their input is sorely missed. Eh, who knows? We can only evaluate the end product on its own, and I can only say that this third "Pirates" is a seriously confused movie, in tone and structure. To say it's all over the map would be understating it - it's all over the whole of the atlas.

I do not fancy myself a simpleminded moviegoer. I don't need to be spoon-fed a plot bit-by-bit, I am usually more than adept at keeping up on my own. Keep in mind, I'm the guy who saw, liked, and (I think) understood "Ocean's Twelve." But here, there is SO much incident, SO many characters, SO many betrayals, turns of fortune, changes in tone and turns of events, that I was left utterly bewildered. It is not the fact that the plot is confusing that troubles me. It's that I'm not at all sure that, once it is carefully examined, all the pieces fit together in a satisfactory way.

We have reached the point in the review where I am supposed to describe the story to you. The mind reels at the prospect, but I will forge ahead. As the film opens, the remaining crew of the now-lost Black Pearl, along with Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and the resurrected Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) are negotiating for a ship to sail to the ends of the Earth, where they hope to recover the Pearl and, of course, her captain, Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). This involves dealings with a pirate named Sao Feng, played by Chow Yun-Fat, who plays a startlingly small role in the events to come, given the fact that Chow Yun-Fat is playing him. New Movie Law: If you get Chow Yun-Fat for something and do not have anything for him to do, then try and FIND something for him to do.

Anyway, they successfully commandeer a ship and sail for the ends of the Earth, the first of many tremendously imaginative vistas the movie provides us with, and then head for the much-ballyhooed Davy Jones's Locker. (In a perfect world, there would still be doubt as to whether or not they find Jack Sparrow, but we live in a world of advertising, so by now you all know that they do.) The Locker is visualized as a vast desert where Jack Sparrow commands the immobile Black Pearl, while barking orders to an apparently imaginary crew of duplicates of himself. I have to wonder what audience the writers thought they were aiming for, here. As an experienced moviegoer, I'm fairly used to this kind of schizophrenic scene. But what average moviegoer or kid who just wants to see the new "Pirates" flick is going to relate to this with anything but confusion?

The crew locates Sparrow with surprisingly little fuss, and they convince him to return to the real world, though not until after a scene where he threatens to leave Will, Elizabeth, Barbossa and others in the Locker. Or maybe he was bluffing. Or maybe not. This is but the first of many, many scenes where the true motivations of characters can only be guessed at, by design, until the audience is not sure there's anyone they can trust, or even like. Jack is a selfish scoundrel, we know that, and his adherence to that is part of his charm, but we've already had two movies where he's acted like a selfish scoundrel and then did the right thing, so we pretty much already know which way his character is going. Will gets a decidedly evil twinge to his character here, but where he acquires it and why I cannot attempt to explain. Elizabeth's motivations and true feelings toward Jack and Will get turned around so many times it's a wonder the poor girl doesn't have whiplash. And Barbossa is a great character, but who really knows why he wanted to save Jack in the first place?

Phew, we have a lot more characters to cover. There's Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), who controls the East India Trade Company, and who wants to rule the seas with an iron fist. He holds the heart of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), who as a result is forced to do his command, though the logic and intelligence of Beckett keeping Jones’s heart under guard on Jones’s own ship is to be questioned. Commodore Norrington (Jack Davenport) is back in command of his own ship, sort of, though he too goes through the Character Development Ringer before we are done. Will's father, Bootstrap Bill Turner, is still a prisoner on Davy Jones's ship, and half the time seems like a mindless drone who is losing his soul. All this, and we haven't even touched Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris), the witch doctor who (I think) brought Barbossa back to life and may or may not be the living embodiment of a sea god named Calypso, but seeing as how NOTHING comes of that sub-plot, really, why the heck did we include it?

I'm sure there are answers to questions like these in the movie, but I'll be damned if I caught most of them - or, more importantly, if they were made entertaining. The entire middle section of the movie plays like a long slog through too much plot and too many revelations stacked too high on top of each other. The audience has to start keeping flow charts and scorecards just to keep track of the allegiances and motivations of everyone involved. And since it all is basically for naught as we get caught up in the final battle sequence, and the list of things we really need to know is really quite short, why complicate matters?

The final battle sequence, and all the story developments that come out of it, are indeed well done and quite entertaining, but that only underscores the relatively weak sauce the audience has been served during the film's middle sections. Was that middle 60-to-90 minutes really necessary to prepare for this? The action is suitably spectacular and a lot of fun, but coming as it does, it almost feels like too little, too late.

Let's be honest. People are seeing "At World's End" for Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. And why not? He's a great actor, playing a great character. That's what makes it so odd that the film gives him comparatively little to do this time around. Compared to the emotional whirlwind that both Elizabeth and Will go on before the considerable running time is over, Jack gets a surprisingly empty plate, or at least a plate empty of memorable incident. There are a few funny lines and good moments, but nothing that holds a candle to even his first appearance in "Curse of the Black Pearl." Even the much-ballyhooed cameo by Keith Richards as Jack's father (in what has to be one of the worst-kept secrets in Hollywood history) seems to be over before it began.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a review where I criticized "Spider-Man 3" and its director, Sam Raimi, for trying too hard to include too much in the space of one film. In the interim, there have been some additional factors (time, additional viewings of Spidey and the perspective "Pirates" gives me) that all indicate I owe Raimi and his movie an apology. Yes, "Spider-Man 3" is busy, but never at the expense of the narrative, and it all ties together thematically with an elegance that is relatively graceful. "Pirates 3," sadly, is much more complicated with much less emotional payoff. Compare the two films and Raimi looks increasingly like a young prodigy playing a flawed but challenging tune, and Gore Verbinski and his writers look more like a frantic soloist trying to work a one-man-band.

The film is not bad, really - there are the aforementioned action sequences, excellent production values and funny moments, and the endless value that the Jack Sparrow character brings to the enterprise. The flaws are more of the misguided variety, like a bunch of ideas that may have seemed good on paper but probably should have been pared down before they actually reached film. After the wonderful "Curse of the Black Pearl" and the lesser-but-still-entertaining "Dead Man's Chest," this one reads as far more slap-dash and unfinished than its predecessors. If this is indeed the final "Pirates" movie, how curious that such an incredibly successful franchise would choose to end on such a confused note.

From the Favorites Shelf: "Heroes of World Class"

by Jeff McGinnis, Lead Usher

160 minutes, now available on DVD

"Once...I had five brothers. Now, I'm not even a brother." - Kevin "Von Erich" Adkisson, quoted by David Manning

"Heroes of World Class" is a film that begins in triumph and ends in tragedy. Not an uncommon theme in the cinema, and when you add in the fact that its subject is professional wrestling, it sadly becomes even more common. But the tale it has to tell is one of the most shattering heartbreak imaginable, and includes more astounding twists of fate than even the most sadistic screenwriter could ever possibly invent. And yet, there is also triumph to be found here, in the form of one man: Kevin Adkisson, who wrestled under the name Kevin Von Erich, and who watched as all other members of his family departed, many of them by their own hand.

And yet Kevin still remains, has a loving family of his own, and seems happy and emotionally healthy. When he speaks, it is with a homespun level of insight that we suspect has helped him through some of the most emotionally scarring events it is possible for one man to go through. At one point, Kevin's father, himself suffering from brain cancer, told him, "You'd kill yourself, too, if you had the guts." Kevin responded, "No, Dad, it takes guts to stay here. Killing myself would be the easy way out."

The full title of the movie is, "Heroes of World Class: The Story of the Von Erichs and the Rise and Fall of World Class Championship Wrestling." You have almost certainly never heard of it (the film has never been released theatrically and is only available on DVD), and if you are not a wrestling fan, you almost certainly have no interest in seeing it. But I hope with this article I can convince a few non-wrestling fans to give it a look, as not only is it easily the best wrestling documentary ever made, but it contains a great deal that is genuinely involving and moving for general audiences. Its subject may be wrestling, but its themes and story are universal.

The film begins in the early 1980s, with Jack Adkisson, who wrestled under the name Fritz Von Erich, running a regional wrestling promotion out of his hometown of Dallas, Texas. Expanding their television coverage to include another program, one which would be aired around the world in syndication, this small promotion quickly grew to be the talk of the wrestling world, and revolutionized the business in ways that still are felt today. The film talks to many of the announcers, writers and on-air talent from the era, who paint a portrait of how exciting it was to build such an innovative product from the ground up.

The stars of the show, though, were Jack's sons, who all wrestled under the name "Von Erich": Kevin, David, Kerry, and, later, Mike. They were the complete opposite of what had worked in wrestling before: Instead of older veterans who were slow and hard-hitting, they were young, good looking boys whose charisma and talent drew not only the traditional wrestling audience, but also younger fans. The kind of kids who before would be going to the movies or the clubs on Friday nights were now, instead, watching wrestling. Along with the exploding television ratings, the future looked amazingly bright for the local company which was running out of the grubby Sportatorium in downtown Dallas.

And then it all began to come down, slowly at first, and then in a startling deluge. In 1984, David Von Erich passed away while touring Japan, apparently of an intestinal ailment. Then, Mike Von Erich, suffering from a shoulder injury, contracts a case of Toxic Shock Syndrome, from which he amazingly recovers, but which clearly leaves its mark on his mental faculties. (In an eerie juxtaposition, we see footage from just before his hospitalization, and then at a press conference just after, and he looks like a completely different individual from one moment to the next.) Kerry is involved in a motorcycle accident and has to have a foot amputated. The youngest son, Chris, has his growth stunted by asthma medication at a young age, and is heartbroken over his inability to follow in the family footsteps.

All these events are seemingly aggravated by father Fritz, who apparently insists upon pushing his young sons back into the ring well before it was healthy for them to be doing so. In many ways, Fritz (who passed away in 1997) remains an enigma in the film, as those around the company paint a picture of the man that is both endearing and infuriating. Kevin insists his father loved them all (though it was apparent who were his favorites), but why would a loving father push his own sons so hard at the apparent expense of their own mental health? The movie does not presume to answer these kinds of questions, and the choices Fritz makes remain as mysterious as the man himself.

More tragedy follows, leading to the downfall of World Class as a promotion and the virtual collapse of the Von Erich family as a whole. The sadness connected to World Class is not just limited to the family, though - toward the end of the film, the names of over 20 wrestlers who worked for the company are flashed on the screen, all of whom have passed away, many of them long before their time. Suicides. Murders. Heart failures. Plane crashes. AIDS. Wrestling has had more than its share of death in the past few years, but for so many connected to one small company to have left us, so early in their lives, really underscores the misfortunes of the company in general, and the Von Erichs in particular.

But Kevin remains, the last of his family, and bears the weight of the legacy on his shoulders with a remarkable level of grace and dignity, under circumstances which many (including many in his own family) might find unbearable. He is amazingly open and honest in his interviews for the film, climaxing in an amazing sequence where, as the Sportatorium is being torn down all around them, Kevin and the director tour the old arena one last time.

The film focuses much - maybe too much - on World Class’s in-ring product, particularly in the first hour, but that is understandable, and also gives viewers who weren’t fans of World Class a chance to sample what the product was all about. Brian Harrison, the director, was a fan of the company as a child, and it is apparent that the movie is a labor of love, made practically on a shoestring. The video quality of the archival footage is often poor, but is probably as good as can be found, given its age. The film’s interviews are shot on what appear to be standard television cameras, and overall the film can’t hold a candle to the slick production values that come out of WWE’s DVD factory.

But for all that is lacking on the production side, the movie has a genuinely fascinating and moving story, told with passion and care. It is superficially a snapshot of a bygone era of wrestling history, but deeper it is a tale about loss and rebirth. We all face tragedy and loss in our lives, and it is how we deal with it that helps us define who we are. Toward the film’s end, we see Kevin and his young sons playing on the field at Texas Stadium, where the Von Erichs once performed in triumph in front of thousands of fans. The crowds may have faded, but after facing unimaginable personal hardships and coming out the other side with such a beautiful family by his side, there is still amazing triumph to be found in Kevin’s life. This is a remarkable film.

“Heroes of World Class” is available at Amazon.com for $14.99, and can also be found at Best Buy and other retailers nationwide.

"Shrek the Third" Review

by Jeff McGinnis, Lead Usher

** stars (out of four)
93 Minutes, starts Friday, May 18th


I officially shrug and throw up my hands. I give up. The “Shrek” universe has simply not engaged me. I am not invested in any of the characters or situations. I am clearly in the minority in this, and I recognize that. But there is little I can do about it and still write an honest review. Fans of “Shrek” may very well enjoy this third outing with the characters and find my point of view mean-spirited. I know this, but I can only speak for myself, and on behalf of me, I simply don’t care about anything that takes place in “Shrek the Third.”

The first film, easily the best of the series, at least had the novelty of its setting and characters, and the incongruity of the modern pop culture references in its fantasy world. I enjoyed that film the first time I saw it, but further viewings did not deepen my appreciation for it, but rather made the movie’s methods and message all the more shallow. It has funny moments and a few memorable characters, but once you strip away the satirical window dressing, the plot is actually relatively standard stuff, with a climax held together by a textbook Silly Misunderstanding. Oh, how I tire of Silly Misunderstandings. They simply make the characters look all the dumber for engaging in them. So, naturally, the creators of the Shrek series have included one in every installment they’ve made so far.

“Shrek 2” was essentially a remake of the first film, with a similar message and storytelling techniques, again held together by that essential Silly Misunderstanding (which made Fiona look like a dope for not being able to recognize her husband when she saw him, whether or not he had become a human being). It introduced a few new characters (Puss in Boots being the most endearing and enduring of them), but otherwise it was a long way around for the core characters to end up, well, pretty much where they were the last time we saw them.

Now here is the third film, which tries somewhat to take a new approach and tell a different kind of story, but still feels less like a legitimate creative enterprise and more blatantly like a commercial one. This is our 2007 model Shrek, available for delivery to theatres and toy stores nationwide, just in time for the summer blockbuster season. Cynical? Perhaps. But the movie gives me little reason to be optimistic. There are some cute moments and more than a few chuckles, but any spark that was at the core of the project is gone. This is a movie that feels like it’s just going through the motions.

It doesn’t help that the basic traits which made the characters unique seem to have eroded. Shrek (voice of Mike Myers) has morphed from an alienated outsider with a kind soul to a simple everyman, the kind of guy you’d run into down at the bowling alley on Mondays. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the character’s essence seems to have gotten lost along the way, making Shrek positively bland in this third installment. Fiona (Cameron Diaz) is superficially given a more active role this time around, but her actual character has become sadly transparent - she’s practically a doting housewife, now. Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) have become so vapid and interchangeable, that when a magical mishap causes the two of them to switch bodies, it has no impact on the story whatsoever.

The plot: Fiona’s father, the King of Far, Far Away (John Cleese), passes away, in a scene that is drawn out for the sake of humor, and then makes a u-turn and apparently expects us to be touched. (Song played at the king’s funeral: “Live and Let Die.” No, really.) This leaves Shrek as the erstwhile king in his stead. But Shrek does not want to be king, and decides instead to seek out the other remaining heir, a young man named Arthur. No prizes for figuring out THAT reference.

Meantime, Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) is back, and reduced to doing musical theatre at a local pub. Um, okay. He plots to claim the throne of Far, Far Away, and sets in motion a clever, cunning and dastardly plan: He recruits other villains and they invade and take over by force when Shrek leaves. Well, okay, maybe it wasn’t exactly clever. Or even particularly cunning. But it was dastardly, oh yes, it was dastardly.

While on his journey, Shrek is struggling with questions of personal responsibility and acceptance, as he’s just found out that Fiona is pregnant, resulting in an odd scene where the characters almost get into a discussion of the birds and the bees, which will certainly set a few Family Values folks’ tails’ a-wagging. (As will a scene where two kids emerge from a smoke-filled wagon and say in classic stoner tone, “Hey, man, thanks for sharing the frankincense and myrrh.”) Shrek, Donkey and Puss find Arthur (Justin Timberlake) at a medieval high school, where he’s a little wimp who gets beaten up and mocked even by the biggest dweebs. So Shrek must convince him he would be a good king, convince himself he would be a good father, and save the kingdom from Charming’s clutches. That’s about it, really.

The movie is not completely without charm, of course. The animation is, as usual, excellent. There are several funny moments and lines (my personal favorite is Shrek describing how his father once tried to eat him: “I guess I should have seen it coming. He used to give me a bath in barbeque sauce and stick an apple in my mouth.”). I like the development of Fiona encouraging the damsels in distress to take matters into their own hands this time (including a brief shot of them burning their bras). And the ever-reliable Gingerbread Man gets a great moment where, as he’s being threatened, his life flashes before his eyes, oven and all.

But a few clever moments are not enough to give this “Shrek” a reason to exist, other than the money it will make and the franchise it will prolong. We introduce new characters to sell and further dilude the old ones. It doesn’t help that (spoiler alert) Shrek and Fiona actually have triplets, which means even more characters to keep track of and less screen time to define them in. The word is that “Shrek 4” will be the last in the series. This pronouncement does not upset me in the slightest. For whatever reason, this is one pop culture ride I just cannot go along with.

Spider-Man 3 Review

by Jeff McGinnis, Lead Usher

*** stars (out of four)
140 minutes - starts Friday, May 4th

The one thing that cannot be denied about Sam Raimi’s work on the Spider-Man series is the depth he brings to each and every character that is under his watch. Raimi grew up loving the Spider-Man universe and for him the whole series is a culmination of a lifelong dream, but he does not let his passion for his subject hinder him from building a compelling narrative set within that world. It is far too common for someone to become so passionate about something that they are a slave to its construction, and forget to make it beautiful.

Raimi gets his heightened visual style and flair from his roots as a Super-8 filmmaker. But the soul he brings to his characters comes from maturity as a storyteller. There is a visible worldview in all three of the Spider-Man films, and it is a very positive one, which makes these films genuinely unique in an ocean of visual effects blockbusters. There is genuine goodness not just in his heroes, but in almost all of his characters - almost all the villains are good people who have just taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way.

It is this level of detail and care for character construction that, ironically, may be “Spider-Man 3”’s biggest problem. I am not saying that the film’s depth is a bad thing. It’s just that there are so many characters that require it. Beyond Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) himself and his perennial love interest Mary-Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), there are no less than three villains to deal with, not to mention new love interest Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) and the eternally matriarchal Aunt May (Rosemary Harris). This is a movie in serious danger of overpopulation.

The story: After years of thanklessly fighting for the good of the city, Spider-Man has become a hero to all of New York, and for once in his life, things are looking up for his alter-ego Peter Parker, too. Beyond his success in web slinging, he is doing well in school and still has the love of his childhood sweetheart Mary Jane. Her career as an actress, however, is beginning to hit the skids, and her struggle leads to tension between the two young lovers, even as Peter plans on popping the question.

The first villain comes in an expected form: Harry Osborn (James Franco), who has long been awaiting his chance to take revenge on Spider-Man for the death of his father Norman, the Green Goblin. Harry dons a modified version of his father’s suit and takes to the skies in the first of the movie’s numerous bravura set pieces, a chase scene complicated by the presence of the ring Peter plans to give MJ. The development that delays Harry’s quest for revenge seems a mite far-fetched, but it’s certainly an avenue that comic book lore has exploited more than a few times in its history.

Then there’s Flint Marco (Thomas Haden Church), a petty crook who has just escaped from prison. Through a nifty little re-writing of history, it turns out he is the man who actually killed Peter’s beloved Uncle Ben (he was hijacking the car, while his partner was the guy Peter let escape). On the run from the cops, he (of course) stumbles into a testing facility and becomes molecularly transformed into pure sand, becoming the villain The Sandman, who can shift shape at will and at times become a monstrous lumbering mountain of a man. The scene where he first emerges from the sand in his new form is a simply jaw-dropping creation of special effects.

Peter, upon learning the truth about his uncle’s killer, vows revenge and shuns all other responsibilities (including Mary Jane) in pursuit of Marco. It is, of course, at this moment that a nasty alien symbiote that Peter has been unwittingly housing in his apartment decides to attach itself to his suit, turning his familiar red-and-blue costume jet black and augmenting his already impressive abilities with increased strength and agility. There is never any attempt to explain where the symbiote came from or what exactly it is, which is probably just as well - from what I can gather attempting to explain this thing took YEARS in the comics.

The suit’s real function in the story is to act as a symbol of Peter’s single-minded anger and aggression toward Marco, as the symbiote feeds off of his hatred and amplifies it, leading to a marked change in Peter’s attitude as himself, as well. The scenes where he struts down the street like a hep cat are gleefully over the top, but then, if the world’s biggest nerd suddenly decided he was going to be a bad ass, he would be pretty bad at it, wouldn’t he?

Peter has further complications on the job from the arrival of Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) a hotshot young photographer who is competing with Pete for the job of staff photographer at the Bugle. He is eerily similar to Peter in many ways, but brings a different attitude to his duties, one that Peter only matches when he is under the influence of the symbiote. Fans of the comic books know exactly where this relationship is going and what happens to Brock in the process: without spoiling too much, I will only say, it happens, and he plays a vital role in the remainder of the story.

But as I’ve spent the past six paragraphs outlining the plot and still feel like I’ve left stuff out (like how Brock is dating Gwen Stacy, and how she falls for Spider-Man, and how Harry tries to manipulate things, and how Marco has a daughter, and so on), you are beginning to see just how complicated this is. It is tempting to say the movie does too much, but I’m at a loss for what I would cut out, as there’s so much good in what they’ve done I wouldn’t want to sacrifice anything. Perhaps the film is too short, and could have benefited from a longer running time, but it already runs nearly 2 ½ hours, and they were probably prohibited by the constraints of conventional film releasing.

Raimi and his writers (Alvin Sergeant and his brother Ivan) work extremely hard to fit in as much depth into each of these characters as possible while still fulfilling the basic structure needed of a big summer blockbuster. Fans simply looking for action will not be disappointed, as the film boasts some of the most impressive action sequences around, augmented by truly remarkable effects (particularly those of the Sandman). There is a heart here, and I appreciate its presence greatly. I just wonder if Raimi would have been better served by not trying so hard to hit it so far out of the park.

NOTE TO FANS: Bruce Campbell’s role is large enough to warrant billing in the opening credits. And gets to showcase how bad Bruce is at doing a French accent.