Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest

If you are in need in more of Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow, more slapstick Disney and disgustingly good CGI, then get yourself to a nearby cinema for a Pirates of The Caribbean booster. It will protect you from withdrawal symptoms for about twelve months, but be warned; it does not offer lifetime immunity.

Unfortunately director Gore Verbinski and his crew are just another team that have fallen foul to the curse of the sequel. Dead Man’s Chest does nothing that the first one did not. Thankfully however, it does include all the best ingredients of The Black Pearl, and in more or less the right doses.

Yet again Depp steals the show, even over brilliantly hideous CGI and a frantic plot line. He cracks you up with the perfectly timed raising of an eyebrow, and makes being turned into a human kebab almost look like fun. And as the plot unfolds he pulls you closer and closer to the edge of your seat with every minute that he minces his way towards saving the day. He captures the art of slapstick so perfectly that at times you may even have to remind yourself that you are watching more than just a sexier and more expensive episode of The Chuckle Brothers.

Thankfully it isn’t until the final five minutes of the movie that you start to feel cheated. You realise that you are not going to get anything near a neat ending and that the last two and a half hours have been little more than rum slurping, sword yielding filler. But don’t worry, it’s filler that is riding the crest of its technological wave.

The Flying Dutchman’s eternal crew, despite being almost entirely CGI, only just lose the show to Depp. With bodies that are amalgamations of the creepiest creatures of the deep, and the increasingly barnacled face of Bootstrap Bill, the living dead crew of The Flying Dutchman will long haunt adults and children alike. Although the narrative of Dead Man’s Chest does fall a little flat towards the end, Depp and the film’s groundbreaking animation serve as more than adequate buoyancy. And if nothing else floats your boat at least Depp, Bloom and Knightly serve as pretty damn good eye candy.

Image by Bradley Wilson