Skip to main content

Exclusive Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End


For more Pirates of the Caribbean, check out the Rolling Stone cover story with Keith Richards and Johnny Depp and our exclusive photo gallery posing as only a father and son could.

The good news first: Keith Richards totally rocks it playing pirate daddy to Johnny Depps Capt. Jack Sparrow. The deep rumble of his voice and those hooded eyes that narrowly open like the creaky gates of hell make him what the rest of this three-peat is not: authentically scary. Its fun to see Richards swagger, even sitting down. Watch him stage a macabre reunion for Jack and his dear old mum. Dont worry, I wont reveal her secret.

So whats the bad news? Richards is onscreen for barely two minutes. The rest of At Worlds End left me at wits end wading through nearly three hours of punishing exposition, endless blather (pirates take meetings who knew?), an overload of digital effects and shameless setups for Pirates 4. I ask you people: Even if you like Depp (and who doesnt?), do you understand one bloody thing thats going on in this Pirates trilogy? The problem, I think, is that director Gore Verbinski and screenwriters Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio focus on Will Turner, played by the aggressively bland Orlando Bloom, and his quest to find a personality. Kidding. Will wants to rescue his father (Stellan Skarsgard) from the tentacles of Davy Jones, a talking CGI fish with the luck to be voiced by the great Bill Nighy. Will still cant find the balls to make a move on Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley, working her skinny butt off trying to get a rise out of this putz), who spends her time trying to get Chow Yun-Fat, as the pirate lord of Singapore, to help save Jack. Confused? You should be, since Jack (why doesnt someone just tell him hes gay?) was swallowed whole by the Kraken in Pirates 2, but he steps lively here. Hes trapped in Davy Jones Locker, which resembles a hallucination out of Being John Malkovich, with multiple Jacks jabbering at each other.

I applaud the Oscar nomination Depp received for the first Pirates, but the third chapter proves that there can indeed be too much of a good thing. Pirates 3 raises everything from the dead, except inspiration. A huge set piece in which a pirate ship pulls a Poseidon and turns upside down must have cost millions and still looks tacky. And until a wow of a climactic sea battle, the story plods along like a PBS special on the founding pirate fathers. Happily, Geoffrey Rush (absent from Pirates 2) encores his arrghs as Barbossa and shows how nostril-flaring acting should be done. This dude can steal scenes from a monkey, and does. At least Rush and Depp capture the pirate ethos that a lost boy can get older but stay immature forever. I havent mentioned the heart cut out of Davys chest. No reason. I just dont care. Being buried in an avalanche of cliches and incoherence will do that to a guy. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer does deserve a shoutout: It takes a kind of genius to sucker audiences into repeatedly buying the same party tricks. Know what? There really is no legit way to review Pirates 3. Its not a movie at all, its a business proposition.

For more Pirates of the Caribbean, check out the Rolling Stone cover story with Keith Richards and Johnny Depp and our exclusive photo gallery posing as only a father and son could.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Power of Appreciation

Is there anything more mysterious in theworld than the formula to having a successful romantic relationship? Asa divorced woman, I now marvel at those who are able to createpassionate, loving, long-term relationships. From my studies with booksand the school of hard knocks, I believe that one of the most importantingredients in relationships, of all kinds, is appreciation. What is Appreciation? Appreciation is likea much-needed rainfall to a farmer's crops that have been withering ina drought. Just as the crops start to shrivel and die without water,human relationships also start to feel brittle without a steadyapplication of the nourishing, even life-giving, impacts ofappreciation. The dictionary defines appreciation as "a favorablecritical estimate," "sensitive awareness" and "an expression ofadmiration, approval or gratitude." When you appreciate someone, youare tuned into a positive quality of another human being and expressyour gratitude for it. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Best time to Visit Great Wall of China

Great Wall of China is the greatest tourist attraction in the World. And the longest wall in the world, it is an awe-inspiring feat of ancient defensive architecture. Travelers from the eight directions all flock to the Great Wall to walk on the only man-made structure visible from space. To look out from one of the guard towers out at the barren mountains and the Wall snaking off into the distance is a view not to be forgotten. Standing on the Wall, you can get a good feel for what the Wall was all about. The Great Wall offers a timeless charm to tourists, but scenery varies with seasons. Visit it in different time you will get a quite different scene. Most of the popular sections of the great wallare located around Beijing, so the following is written with Beijing's climate in mind, although temperatures are likely to be colder and rainfall more as the Great Wall is on the mountains. Tips: The Great Wall at Simatai has been closed for major renovation from June 2010. The renovat...
Post a Comment
Read more

Achieve Seamless Scalability With Construction ERP for Subcontractor Management

The subcontractor management in the construction ERP software is just a useful tool used to watch and pursuit the relationships between organizations and all the third party contractors. This ERP software module monitor all the initial building agreements, as it is tightly integrated with the accounts and inventory collectibles. Many companies in this project-based construction and real estate industry believes in working with the strategies of outsourcing and subcontracting to have effective pricing policies and delivery edges. Why is it so necessary? For reliable bid preparation and subsequent project execution, subcontractor database handling is quite needed. The stored database in this offered module should also manage in such manner so that vendors and outsourcing agencies performance could be tracked. Also, the database must have relevant information that efficiently operates processes of a construction company to earn the better profit margins. Specifically, this part of constru...
Post a Comment
Read more