There are two words to describe the penultimate installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy.  Simply Amazing.  The very anticipated sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, delivers.  And it delivers well.

Dead Man's Chest is a thrilling pirate adventure that will please viewers of all ages.  The story starts out on a rain-drenched Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) as she awaits her groom, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), but their wedding is cut short due to a warrant for their arrests.  It appears Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) has a compass in his possession that will lead to the absolute power of the seas, and an evil Lord/Trading Merchant wants it.

Will Turner is granted permissoin to seek out Sparrow and retreive the compass for the merchant, or he and his fiancee will be hanged.  Wacky mishaps and adventures follow that range from a primitive tribe that views Sparrow as their deity (which reminded way too closely of Peter Jackson's King Kong) to a breathtaking sword battle on the shores of Isle de Muerte.

Along their journey, Sparrow is warned by Turner's dead father that he has a debt to pay to Davy Jones (Bill Nighy).  Sparrow tries to evade him, but he is unsuccessful.  Along with his sea creature The Kraken (which is awesome by the way) Davy Jones is always hot on Sparrow's heels.

The rest of the plot would be foolish to give away and a travesty to the interested viewer.  The whole crew of the Black Pearl is back and just as funny as ever.  Gore Verbinski's second installment into this franchise seemed to steer clear of the "Disney" kids flick and took more of a mature storyline.  There is more violence and a step up in the romance department and Keira Knightley was much more sexy in this installment, on top of how great she looked in the first.

The special effects were fantastic especially the effects for The Kraken and Davy Jones's crew members, as were the action sequences.  The crew of this film really didn't hold anything back and the finished product was spectacular.

The ending was definately a set up for the third installment and even reveals a new crew member that will be tagging along for the third ride.

All in all, this film was nearly perfect.  There was nothing wrong with it, even with its length being just under 3 hours.  It never dragged and it kept the kids into it.  The adults also have Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightley to ogle at as well.  So bring the family out to theater and lets finally smash that nine year box office record held by that highly overrated Titanic!

**** out of ****

I would give this five if I could.  Simply Amazing.                

Yikes!  Say it isn't so!  A pirate movie will be better than the crap this summer has given us?

I'm def. going to see this.  Depp is insanely talented.

holy fuck this movie ROCKED


SPOILERS


This was one hell of a flick, Johnny Depp was great od course, but I didn't know it wasn't gonna have an ending.  How the hell is Johnny gonna survive that battle with the giant squid thingy?  I thought he was killed, but it looks like he's in the next one so he must some how.  And bringing Geofery Rush back was a great idea even though I thought he died at the end of the first one, but is he gonna be a good guy in the next one?

The three way sword fight on the giant wheel is one of the greatest action scenes I have seen, truly spectacular.

This was one hell of a ride, can't wait for the next one, too bad I gotta wait another year

Wow! What a ride.

I'm afraid I didn't get to enjoy this as much as I wanted...because the theater was full, I was late, and the only seat left was 2 seats at the very front! Meaning I had to look up the whole time....everything was blured out. Oh well.

Anyway, what an amazing movie! I liked the first one a lot and was really hoping they'd get the sequel right when I heard about it. When I heard a couple of bad reviews about the movie (saying that the film had no plot and that it was basically nothing but a bunch of action scenes) I got scared. Needless to say, I was worried for nothing. This was every bit as good as the first one. I won't say it's better, though. It was never boring, but we didn't seem to spend as much time with each character...you know...like Star Wars III. It was like we spent as much time with each character as you do in a trailer...only this film was not as extreme.

I loved this film and cannot wait for the third one. Hopefully it'll live up to this one. I'm sure it will, seeing as how they're already almost done shooting it!

Go see this movie!

-Chris

Excellent review. I can't wait to see this.

Quoted from guyjackson a primitive tribe that views Sparrow as their deity (which reminded way too closely of Peter Jackson's King Kong)

That sounds like Return of the Jedi.

I LOVE this movie!! I have been waiting to see it for months and I couldn't believe it's finally here. I saw it this afternoon and the theater was packed -- thankfully there was only two of us and we could squeeze in a little higher up in the seats so we weren't hurting our neck. But it was great.... it was funnier than the first one, more, longer swordfights, the Kraken -- Davy Jones -- it was all there and I was so happy that it lived up to my expectations. And there were so many connections to the first one, that if you didn't watch The Curse of the Black Pearl since 2003, it was like having a bunch of inside jokes that only I could understand. Somehow it made it more likeable. But, I forgot to stay after the credits but I was planning on seeing it again anyway.




AYE! There be spoilers below! (This is the only thread that I can get away with talking like a pirate)



One thing that brought it down was the kiss between Jack and Elizabeth. They had great chemistry before... but I don't know... I just didn't appreciate it. Especially because Will saw. If Will hadn't seen, it would be OK. Now there's going to be a whole thing about it, I'm sure. If the guilt had just gotten to Elizabeth then that would've been fine ... but Will knows... I don't know, I can't explain it. That just bummed me out. Oh well, it didn't ruin the movie for me.


Barbossa!

Well, I suppose I'll have to be the voice of dissent.  And SPOILERS.  So I apologize.

This movie was pathetic.  It was a poorly scripted, poorly acted, poorly edited mess.  It was boring, sloppy, long, inappropriate for young children, and a generally grueling two and a half hours.

Backing up a bit, I will say that it suffered from a flawed base.  The first film was very enjoyable, but it was a bit cold...there was almost a total lack of any sort of character development.  All plot plot plot.  As it turned out, this worked for the first movie...but not the second.  

We start out with about thirty minutes of absolutely nothing happening.  Okay, that's fine.  They're going epic, so it'll be slow to start.  Except that, unlike Fellowship of the Ring, unlike Once Upon A Time in the West, there actually is absolutely nothing happening.  There's no character development, because Will and Elizabeth are made out of cardboard and Sparrow isn't given anything to make him more interesting.  So what's left?  Plot of course...except that the plot seems to involve the main characters running around double-crossing each other.  The frantic "who's screwing who" feel of the first movie is taken over the edge, and oh boy does it get tedious.  Elizabeth's fooling random sailors to get to Will who's been fooled by Jack and left with Davy Jones who's then fooled by Will.  When she reaches Jack she's fooled by Jack who's then revealed and fights with Will and Norrington for a good hour and a half or so until Davy Jones shows up and goofy costumes chase everyone around for a while.  In the climax, Jack shows his good side and shows up to save the day by shooting some CG at some CG, then gets fooled by Elizabeth, chained to a mast, snotted on, and consumed by CG in slow motion.  Along the way we're treated to some totally inappropriate violence (a man's eye plucked out by crows in CU, a man's body is broken in half, name what you will), roughly ninety-three subplots that go absolutely nowhere, Orlando Bloom being whipped by his own father (now that WAS a treat), and just about every stupid-native-tribe gag in the book.  Oh yeah and I guess Barbossa really fooled everybody by not dying when he was shot in the heart and all that blood poured out of his chest.

Now since everyone's backstabbing each other all the time, that'd make for some serious emotional ups and downs, right?  Sorry, no time.  The way characters relate to each other stays fairly static, no matter who does what to who.  Ol' Will seemed fairly pleased with his father immediately after being whipped by him, while Lizzie didn't mind at all that Jack had doomed her husband to death or worse and then used her.  

So, without any character work and a moronic plot, what does that leave us?  Captain Jack Sparrow, of course.  Sadly, Jack seems to have lost his edge a bit.

"You smell funny!"

That's over the line.  That's just over the line.  As happens so often when writers do something great and then try to follow it up, Sparrow becomes sort of a bloated caricature of himself...still played excellently by the infallible Depp, but written like a complete and utter clown shoes.  And if that weren't enough, lets take a brief look at what Jack does: tricks and dooms Will for the first half of the movie, tricks and uses Elizabeth for the second, and then looks out for his good old self.  I dunno about you, but to me, the Jack in the first movie came off as a charming, harmless fool.  In this one, he's just an ***hole.  

I can't bear to think about this movie much more, so I'll just bullet point some other problems.

-With the exception of the wheel fight, the swordfights were godawful and boring.  Nobody wants to watch people prance around in the shallows.
-CGI is still not exciting.  Sorry.  Kraken looked good but those scenes were boring.
-Just because whatsherface had an interesting accent didn't mean she should drone on for ten minutes about boring crud.  
-About 50% of the dialogue in this film is self-satisfied references to the first Pirates.
-The score was a rerun of the first.  No big new melodies, no startling additions.  It was a rerun.  Credited Zimmer instead of Badelt this time, I noticed.
-The movie just had no sense of fun.  It was dark, dreary, and slow moving.  Not good for something with no three-dimensional characters, eh matey?  
-Will's entire father subplot had no resolution.  
-Elizabeth did nothing.
-The humour, for the most part, was poor.  When it wasn't referencing the first film, as above, it was usually quite weak.  The two leftover pirates from the Pearl were especially unfunny.
-That clip at the end was stupid.  I also called it -- said exactly what it would be -- about halfway through the other film.

Oh yeah, and Sparrow's death.  Give me a freaking break.  This guy has spent the entire movie drunk and screwing people over, and suddenly he's gonna take a slow motion stand and charge into the face of death?  It was laughable.  Poorly shot and laughable.  And where did all that snot go, anyway?

Credit where credit's due:  Johnny was just as good, though with a bad script, CG was great (technically; it still wasn't effective in the action), production was great, that score's still great, and there were great little flourishes by Verbinski (who I have great respect for, by the way).

This movie sucked.  It was the least fun I've ever had in a theater.  My friend said that his favorite part of the showing was when someone in the audience dropped a bottle and it made a funny noise.  A disappointment through and through.  

Quoted Text -Will's entire father subplot had no resolution.

Of course it didn't. That's covered in the third film which finishes up filming this August and will be released next May.

-Chris

Quoted from FilmMaker06 Of course it didn't. That's covered in the third film which finishes up filming this August and will be released next May.

Perhaps.  But that's no excuse for no resolution whatsoever.  The great sagas - Lord of the Rings, Star Wars - would introduce a subplot that would be resolved in a later episode but still sell it.  

Will's subplot had no rise and fall.  He found his father, and then his relationship stayed constant until he left.  There were no twists or turns or changes in the plot...just a bunch of dialogue that wasn't all that important.  There were scenes to show that they loved each other, but we already assumed that, didn't we?  

Lazy writing.  Too much setup for the third movie.  That's what I thought.

It's ok if you don't like it, but the special effects aren't terrible. That's going is being stupid just because you didn't like the movie. If the special effects in this movie were bad then ever other movie that has ever come out has horrible special effects, because this is top of the line effects.

-Chris

Pretty much every movie nowadays has crappy special effects. It all looks cartoonish. The new star wars movies, King Kong, Pirates of the Carribean, they're all terrible. They think just because it cost a billion dollars, and people actually go to see them that it makes them okay. Things looked more realistic before they started overusing CGI. Pirates just particularly gets on my nerves, but I don't want to take away from the fact that the new special effects craze has ruined a lot of other movies as well. This was a PIRATES thread after all.

Great In Doses....But The Film Accomplishes Nothing

Captain Jack Sparrow owes an unpaid debt to Davy Jones and his underwater sea creatures. The deal was that he would be captain of the black pearl for 13 years, in return for his soul. Time's up for Jack and he must pay up.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is the much anticipated sequel to POC: Curse of the Black Pearl. With every sequel, one must be able to up the ante. People expect more action, more adventure, more danger, and more love challenged between the characters. At first glance it would seem that Dead Man's Chest would deliver all of this and more. Unfortunately, it suffers from many things and relies on too much in order to get the audience to go along with the ride. When compared to the original, and you always compare the sequel to the original, Dead Man's Chest doesn't match up. The film is good, it was quite good and it will most definitely entertain, but the film doesn't seem to accomplish all too much.

Dead Man's Chest and it's soon to be released sequel At World's End (what a goofy title) takes a note from the Matrix trilogy. Both movies were filmed at the same time and will most likely start off directly where the other left off. The ending to DMC does in fact set up everything in the third. Much like reloaded though, no matter how good this film is, it won't be able to touch the original. My main complaint is that the characters accomplish nothing. DMC is a much darker film then Pearl, at the end the characters are basically left with nothing which is suppose to make us want to see the next installment even more to see how they get out of such predicaments, specifically speaking, Jack Sparrow's current situation. But like I said before, the characters accomplish nothing. At the beginning of the film, Will and Elizabeth are suppose to get married, they don't, They are suppose to get the Dead Man's Chest, they don't. Will is suppose to free his father, he doesn't. Jack is suppose to the souls, he doesn't. DMC is just one long set up for the third film, which makes me beg the question. Did this story really need to be split up into two films? There was so much that they could have cut out in order to condense the two film into one. But alas, we live in a greedy world.

Depp, does very well with Sparrow, as is expected. Although, Sparrow seemed to come off as too feminine in this film, I don't know if this was just me but that's what I got from Depp's performance. From the way he would run to the way he would try and grab the key off the Commodore. This doesn't hurt the film all too much, but it can be distracting. Bloom, he seemed to annoy me in this film. As he does in every other film he is in, save for LOTR. Not necessarily his performance, but his voice. The way he tries to seem commanding but comes off as a pretty boy. Keira Knightley was alright here, she doesn't do all that much and there is no real chemistry here between her or Bloom. Or even character development for that matter. Hats off to Nighy, he did a superb job replacing Rush as the main villain. The special effects of his character were very well done and you can see how they modeled this character after him with every expression that he makes. His "sea phantoms" are another great treat for the eyes. These guys make the skeletons in the original look like nothing. I really enjoyed seeing the ship burst out from underneath the water surface. Skarsgård was another treat, for the very little screen time that he had, he did a mighty fine job. But what was with the voodoo chick? I did not understand half of what she said.

The special effects are great and are perfect for the "summer blockbuster adventure" film. From the giant sea creature to the sea phantoms, everything is top notch. I spotted one or two off beat parts but that's mainly due to the crazy factor of what was on the screen. Seeing the creature destroy the ships was great. But that's the only real adventure action type sequences we get. Other then a long and drawn out sword fight on a giant wheel, that was cool at first, but once it kept rolling, the cool factor was rolling away with it. The sword fights do not match the original in any way, but that's not supposed to be the highlight, it's the huge sea creature destroying everything in its path.

The comedy did seem forced in some parts. You could tell that they were going for the funny in some scenes but it doesn't always work. Sparrow is basically one joke after the other, or one funny look after the other. There are funny parts in the film, but it just tried to capture the same spirit as the original, but it doesn't. The score is great and has that "adventurous" feel to it, even if it is played once too many. But when you have a great score like that, or Superman, you're suppose to play it every chance you get.

In the end, Dead Man's Chest is a good summer action adventure film. It does deliver on the action, the comedy (in parts), the excitement, the special effect and the enjoyment. Although, you may find yourself wondering what more they could have done, why the film is so long with so many things that do not even need to be in here. As well as with the final scene, you may have some questions that you can only pray for get answered in the final…hopefully final installment.

7/10

I'll just make it quick:

This is the first film this summer where I did not come out of the theater feeling slightly dissapointed.  From begining to end, this one just tries so hard to entertain and it suceeds amazingly well.  While there are a few slow spots here and there and the entire movie could have lost about fifteen minutes, I still think this one was a very big sucess.  The special effects, the story, a nice little cliff hanger, and, of course, Johnny Depp.  I am secure enough in my hetero sexuality that I can say this: he is one sexy man.  And this was one fine fucking film.

**** out of ****