Pirates of the Caribbean: A Shipwreck with a Few Survivors
Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom

Review by Breanne Boland
July 13, 2006 Issue

It’s misleading to call the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie the second part of a trilogy. Yes, ultimately there will be three movies, but the first movie stands alone, while the others are more of a long two-part film. Dead Man’s Chest doesn’t finish with “…to be continued…” but it may as well. Unfortunately, rather than just marring the end of the movie with its abrupt and incomplete ending, this compulsion toward making a longer story (and two blockbuster movies instead of one) compromises the characters as well.

The great joy about the first Pirates movie was what a delightful surprise it was. It was a movie based on a cheesy animatronic-based ride at the Disney theme parks, making a film adaptation seem laughably bad at best. But, astoundingly, it was clever and well written, not just good but better than it needed to be. It feels incongruous to describe a big-budget, Jerry Bruckheimer-produced movie as a gem, but it was. Alas, like many sequels to off-kilter, unexpected hits (see the unfortunate follow-up to The Blair Witch Project – well, actually, don’t), the elements of the first are diminished on their return to the screen.

Things were pretty well tied up at last film’s end, as Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley’s characters were comfortably together, and Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow was happily at the helm of his ship. However, after helping Sparrow escape in the last film, the betrothed pair are arrested and sentenced to hang, unless Bloom can track Sparrow down and satisfy the terms of a difficult deal made with the man who condemned the lovers. Sparrow, of course, has his own difficulties and obligations, though his involve angry, cannibalistic natives, a kraken, and a ship full of undead sea creature mutant men.

It’s not that this film is without things to recommend it –Knightley’s best work is done in the vein of spunky, and Bill Nighy is, as always, a marvelous ham as the tentacle-faced villain. There’s also a wonderful fight sequence involving a waterwheel careening through the jungle, and some marvelous sword fighting. However, in giving Depp’s pirate captain a series of moral dilemmas, presumably to give him character conflict enough to stretch over two films, he becomes far less likable. It’s a doomed strategy as it was his flamboyant, facetious, bizarre Sparrow that brought the first film to life. Far be it from me to condemn a film for trying to be complicated and make multi-faceted characters, but it is Pirates of the frigging Caribbean. Its fun comes from broadly sketched people and situations – uptight bureaucrats, hedonistic pirates, and rebellious young women. The Godfather it is not.

Its length almost matches it, though. While it’s only seven minutes longer than its predecessor (which clocked in at nearly two and a half hours itself), Dead Man’s Chest feels about an hour longer. As this is only the first half of the story, which will be completed with next year’s At World’s End, it seems possible that one movie’s worth of story was bloated across two films. It’s a shame – I didn’t think it was possible to diminish the appeal of Depp swaggering about with gold teeth and dreadlocks.

Perhaps next year’s film will redeem this one. With a cameo by Keith Richards as Sparrow’s father to look forward to, maybe the gleeful ridiculousness of the first film will be restored. As it is, Dead Man’s Chest will probably be the lesser of the three Pirates films. Lacking any surprises or breakthrough performances, the only thing it has in common with the memorable first film is its title.

Bottom line: a lesson in the law of diminished returns

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