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

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, is nothing if not supremely entertaining. Actually, without the entertainment quality, there’s not a lot of there there. In any case, despite clocking in at nearly two and a half hours, the pace hardly lags, and while perhaps not such a surprise as the first film, its campiness makes it feel like a classic B-movie.

Of course, this is a B-movie with A-list actors. Along with Johnny Depp’s vampy return as Captain Jack Sparrow, welcome additions to the cast include Stellan Skarsgard as “Bootstrap” Bill, father to Orlando Bloom’s (still-nascent) hero, and Bill Nighy, truly owning the role of Davey Jones, despite having his face entirely concealed by a writhing mask of tentacles (no offense to Hugo Weaving, but the Wachoswki brothers could have used this kind of energy behind the mask in V for Vendetta). Bloom’s acting has improved since the first Pirates, but Keira Knightley’s character is occasionally bogged down with girlish simpering, which takes the energy out of generally fine performance.

The special effects are, on the whole, pretty amazing. A special note should be made of the work in creating the crew of the Flying Dutchman – the film is worth repeated viewings just in order to observe the variation and attention to detail on the dozens of crew members.

The plot may not make a whole lot of sense, but who really cares? The entire purpose of the film is to lead into the final (?) chapter, to be delivered Memorial Day of 2007. As much as I may generally scoff at seeing trailers for movies that are about a year away, ten months seems a short time to wait for another installation in the Pirates franchise.