"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.