Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End 2007
After the disappointing Pirates 2 my expectations were so low that I waited for this on DVD and even a while after that, but still wanted to at least see how it ended up. This movie is much the same as the second, but at least there is an ending here, albeit an unsatisfying one. At World’s End has a huge cast with all kinds of people picked up in the first two movies, plus more that are added here. These are great actors with a lot of Oscar nominees including Geoffrey Rush, Keira Knightley, and Johnny Depp, but also featuring other heavy hitters like Chow Yun-Fat, Bill Nighy, Stellan Skarsgård, and Orlando Bloom. But it is just too large a cast to keep up with. As crowded as the movie is with cast members, it is just as crowded with big action scenes, battle after battle, and way, way too many plot points and twists. Everyone is constantly double- and triple-crossing everyone else, so much so that you never know what is going on. Even the ending of the movie is saved until after the credits are finished rolling.
Like the first two movies, they throw in unnecessarily grotesque scenes, like a sailor with frostbite accidentally cracking off his toe. Big laughs! Depp has a number of hallucinatory scenes featuring himself in multiple roles. And they go to Singapore for some reason. The very odd Jamaican woman just seems tacked on. Everything in the movie screams “This is a giant expensive movie!” and yet it just doesn’t work.
That said, there is at least an ending. And all of that money spent does at least provide for lots of changes of scenery and impressive, if confusing and excessive, action scenes. I’ll give this one a C-, somewhere between the first and second movies.
Written: 03 Mar 2008