PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END (POTC 3, henceforth) isn't very good. It wants to be an exciting, family-friendly adventure, but it begins with the hanging of a child. Now, I now that to somebody in Studio City, nothing says "entertainment" like the twitching feet of a dying juvenile. But I hate to break it to you, buddy: you hamstrung yourself very early on. The stakes are too high here, the villains too villainous, the deaths too real for POTC 3 to be fun. Yet this is a POTC movie, not NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, so it's not like you were going to sell it as a drama.
Early pall aside, POTC 3 makes no sense. It would have us believe that Pax Brittania was a bad thing, that the world is much better off with pirates disrupting the global economy than with trading vessels being able to ply the seas, and that the life of a felon is somehow noble. The earlier POTC movies at least kept the pirates morally ambiguous - here, they're good guys who do a little raping and pillaging in their spare time.
And yet, POTC 3 does have some things to recommend it. The performances are great fun, with Geoffrey Rush and Bill Nighy chewing the scenery with gusto comparable to Johnny Depp. The special effects are magnificent, and the set design is out of this world.
If only the movie hadn't gone so dark so early, it might have swept me away. Alas.
2 comments:
The Pirates franchise lost its steam right after the first one.
The second one was weak and they were just lost it with this one.
Depp is fun but not much else.
I agree with your opinion of the whole Britian is bad, Pirates good. Pirates some how a icon of freedom spirit or some other nonsense.
Nonsense, indeed. This movie could have been so much better.
Post a Comment