Movies with Kevin
'Pirates' Suffers From Too Much Seriousness

"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" is a movie that should not have been made. This is not to impugn its quality, for it is a film that showcases the majesty of Hollywood and the frailties of the human condition. However, this film was barred from true greatness by the very nature of its material.

In order to see the movie, I had to disobey the orders of the Johnson mechanic, who told me that if I drove too far my right front tire was going to seize. But I was already a week late on seeing the movie, and I figured that, if nothing else, there really can't be that many movie critics who can truthfully claim to have been injured in the line of duty.

The Morrisville theater (the closest one to my summer housing) was about half full, which is pretty impressive for a movie that had been out for a week and a half at the time. This film is the sequel to "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," itself a sequel to the 2003 hit, "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl."

"At World's End" picks up where "Dead Man's Chest" left off. Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) was recently eaten by a kraken, and his friends have to go get him back from the land of the dead so he and the other pirate lords (nine in all) can fight Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), who is the prisoner of Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander), who has Jones's disembodied heart, which he uses to control him.

Beckett wants to kill Sparrow and all the other pirates- a very poignant scene from "Dead Man's Chest" shows the blank parts of a map being painted in. Also entwined with this swashbuckling (what does that word mean?) tale is a love triangle between Sparrow, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly).

This movie failed in three ways, but, to be fair, one of them was unavoidable.

The first is a case of too much of a good thing. What usually happens to ruin a sequel is much of the original cast doesn't return. In the case of the "Pirates." everybody came back for the sequel, and then everybody from the sequel came back for this movie.

The film- which is supposed to be about the joys of a free but dangerous life- flounders under the weight of the accrued characters' histories. This is what I mean by saying that one shortcoming was unavoidable. This would have been a far worse movie if many the older characters had been thrown away.

The second- which may or may not actually be part of the first- is that a lot of the time I really couldn't tell what was going on. For instance: this film opens in Shanghai, where Barbosa (the villain from the first movie, played by Geoffrey Rush) is trying to wrangle a deal with a Chinese pirate. This shortly erupts into a fantastic battle. The only problem is that I have no idea why.

The third is that this movie just isn't fun. "Curse of the Black Pearl" and "Dead Man's Chest" both carried with them a fun-loving panache which set them apart from other action blockbusters. Most of this feeling stemmed from Jack Sparrow, but he is more subdued here. As a result the accumulated mass of seriousness from the other characters takes over. Together these three things- baggage, confusion and a serious lack of wackiness swamp- but don't sink- this movie.

Bonus points for the telescope war and Keith Richards as Jack Sparrow's father. I revise what I said in my last review, which featured an equally unsubtle cameo (in that case, of Spider-Man creator Stan Lee). I've decided that subtlety isn't necessary when all you really want is craziness. If only the rest of this film had been built around that concept. Kevin gives it three and a half stars out of five.