Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

Genres

Adventure, Fantasy

Director

Gore Verbinski

Country

USA

Cast

Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Bill Nighy, Jack Davenport, Stellan Skarsgard, Kevin McNally, Jonathan Pryce, Lee Arenberg, Mackenzie Crook, Tom Hollander, Naomie Harris, David Bailie, Martin Klebba, David Schofield, Alex Norton, Geoffrey Rush

Storyline

To prevent his soul from being damned for all time, Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) must recover the heart of Davy Jones (Bill Nighty), the captain of a ghostly ship, while Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) seeks the heart for his own agenda.

Opinion

Sequels have the power to overpower their predecessors by being terrible or being fantastic. "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" doesn't fall into either category, as it is neither better nor significantly inferior. It is just a fun pirate flick.

The reason why this didn't manage to outdo the first film is the plot. The writers went from a slightly complex and silly plot to a quite dumb and contrived one that is so hard to follow, it's almost imposible to understand what's going on. It involves too many villains and too many subplot, and it is unfocused most of the time.

And unfortunately the characters suffer from that. While Jack Sparrow still is the colourful character I came to love in the first time, and Will and Elizabeth, well, you will still root for their love to thrumph, they same cannot be said for the new characters. They aren't very compelling. There are several villains but they aren't as good as Barbossa not even when combined. Bill Nighty really does his bast as Davy Jones though.

Flawed script aside, the film is good. There still are a lot of jokes - although most of them are the same of the previous film - and the gags aren't that bad either. The special effects are stunning, yet they kind of distract from the plot, and the action sequences are great. And lastly, the film features yet antoher memorable score from Hans Zimmer.

1 comment :

  1. "neither better nor significantly inferior." Yup, that sums up my feelings on this one.

    ReplyDelete