So, this Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest that all the young people are talking about.... Where to begin?
The cinetrix, like Davy Jones, is not as young as she once was, and
after a mere 2 hours and 31 minutes [plus 16 minutes of assorted
trailers--Transformers, holla!] before the mast that commenced at 12:01 this morning, she's feeling a little green about the gills. It happens.
Mind you, the crew of lady pirates and assorted scallywags who convened for a preshow screening of the first and, I'll say it, superior Pirates before venturing off the map in search of adventure on the high seas were able-bodied sea women. [Who said women and seamen don't mix?] We arrived plenty early to pick up tix, stake out seats together, and enjoy the anticipatory buzz. [Were patrons there in full pirate regalia? Aye, but then I suppose one must air the schmatte between Renaissance Faires, yes?]
The trouble began with the studio logo. Disney's magic castle and "When You Wish Upon A Star" music quickly gave way to perhaps the goriest PG-anything flick the cinetrix has seen since, well, I'm gonna have to go back to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, another part 2 that failed to bring the electric boogaloo of the original. Seriously, Walt's hologram is sure to be spinning in the Haunted Mansion that neighbors the swashbuckling ride that spawned this seafaring franchise.
In fact, DMC shares a lot of the sins of the second Indy: needlessly gruesome effects for effects' sake, a bloated cast, and a humor deficit. Yes, Bill Nighy is splendid and supercilious, even obscured by a Medusa mass of CGI tentacles. But Stellan Skarsgard is nearly unrecognizable as Bootstrap Bill Turner--he looks like he's playing Geoffrey Rush in the touring version of the first film. A bunch of other folks reprise their roles; there's a convoluted "plot" about compasses and keys and curses and all sorts of claptrap; Orlando Bloom ["pansy!"] gingerly furrows his noble brow in a vain attempt to convey "jealousy"; and Keira Knightley, seemingly smeared with inexpertly applied self-tanner, gamely resets her massive, ruminant jaw and stamps her pretty feet.
But what of Johnny? Cap'n Jack Sparrow still has his swagger, but too often it feels like the film's evil East India Trading Company has already pressganged everyone's favorite pirate--rendering him little more than a privateer in eyeliner. [Murray Pomerance saw this coming.]
The fight sequence set pieces, while among the best bits of the movie, lack the breathless glee of, say, Fong Sai-Yuk, and the swordplay is not a patch on The Princess Bride, much less swashbuckling epics of yore. How to say this? Basically, if you introduce a giant mill wheel in the second act, it has to go off in the second and a half [short attention spans, remember]. And so on.
Oh, and the flick's portrayal of any race other than pasty white is far from exemplary, too. Who's surprised? Only Noemie Harris as a voodoo priestess who lives waaaay upriver in a new world lair clearly modeled after Marlon Brando's jungle fiefdom in Apocalypse Now overcomes the hamfisted treatment meted out to other Asian and African castmembers, who are dispatched with cynicism boarding on sadism. Colonialism's always a bitch.
As is the Kraken. The massive, tentacled sea beastie Davy Jones dispatches to turn his enemies' ships into matchsticks is truly a wonder, and arguably the one reason to catch Dead Man's Chest at the multiplex.
Still, I think Tennyson [again, not that one] said it best:
The Kraken*
Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant fins the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battering upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by men and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
If only this sequel had stuck with the sea. Instead, it comes across as strangely landlocked, and sand gets into the gears, bringing the whole works grinding to a halt. [Oh, excuse me, a "cliffhanger."] Yes, see Dead Man's Chest, for the 151 minutes of AC, if nothing else, but don't bother to spring for anything other than a manatee matinee.
*At least the poor undergraduates who suffered through a Brit lit survey with me last fall will feel a little frisson of having, you know, learned something, when they cop to the name of the monster.
"Chest" Pains: Any movie about pirates brings out the worst in headline devisers and movie reviewers alike. Please feel free to submit your candidates for most painful pirate pun/belabored prose in the comments.
