Movie Review: Pirates of the Carribean 3: At World's End

Yet another series that continues to go way downhill after a string first entry. Pirates 3 is way to long and way too weird. I would certainly like to have been in the script meetings because the film would be a lot better if there had been some hacking and slashing and burning to get the story down a tighter narrative. As it is, the film is 2 hours of action scenes and 1 hour of exposition that makes no sense. Let's face facts, even though betrayal and ulterior motives are both major themes in the first two films, when half a dozen people betray each other in the space of 30 seconds, it just ceases to matter. This happens several times and pretty soon I found myself wishing everyone would just shut up and fight. Which does happen eventually, so its not a total loss.

The most disappointing aspect (aside from Keith Richards attempt at acting - although he does a good job of looking swarthy and menacing) is that there is about 10 minutes of setup for the next movie. At this point I can guarantee that there will be a Pirates 4, and given the current trend it will suck. So really, I would have been much more satisfied if the climatic battle which would have settled things once and for all had actually materialized rather than being set up and unceremoniously abandoned moments before the first shot had been fired.

In short, go see it if you have three hours to kill, the acting scenes are at least very entertaining. Just don't expect any real story and don't plan your day around it. I made the mistake of going to a 10pm showing and realized that I don't like driving around at 1:30 in the morning.