Film Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Remember what Mae West said about too much of a good thing? Well I think it’s safe to say that Ms. West has never seen Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, although I’d be interested to hear her thoughts on it.

For the franchise’s third and final voyage, the creators and cast of the first two return–and I do mean all of them, no matter how small or insignificant their role. So to do the many attributes of the previous installments, and the fewer but increasingly hard to ignore detriments.

The problems that began to surface in Dead Man’s Chest–mainly the ever-swelling number of characters, plotlines and the screen time devoted to each–here come just short of completely capsizing the film.

There are captains and there are crewmembers, but the PotC sequels make no real distinction. Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are beautiful people and perfectly suited for such shallow, gorgeous style-over-substance period pieces, but it’s Johnny Depp acting nutty while wearing pirate drag that we’re all here to see. And that goes quadruple for Johnathan Pryce’s governor or Jack Davenport’s Norrington.

But the shorter the titles get, the longer the running times get, and at two hours and 48 minutes, At World’s End could use some trimming. Well, a lot of trimming. Preferably with a cutlass.

The logline this time is deceptively simple. To retrieve Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow and The Black Pearl from Davy Jones’ Locker, Bloom, Knightley, voodoo priestess Naomie Harris, the resurrected Captain Barbossa (Geoffery Rush, too good a villain not to be made a hero and co-star) and the colorful crew of the Pearl must cut a deal with Chow Yun-Fat’s Shanghai steam room-dwelling, weirdly-bearded Captain Sao-Feng to get charts to sail into the land of the dead. With Jack returned to life, all of the pirates in the world gather for a massive sea battle against the East India Company, which has allied itself with Bill Nighy’s tentacle-faced Davy Jones to rid the world of all pirates.

Unfortunately, director Gore Verbinski and screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio balloon the plot out to involve an interesting if completely out of nowhere pirate mythology dealing with sea goddess Calypso, Nine Pirate Lords from all over the world, a Pirate King and a sort of underground nation of piracy, complete with national anthem. Each of the half-dozen or so main characters has their own labyrinthine plan full of betrayals and deceptions, and each is trying to get something over on the others. Actually, several somethings.

This is all handled as gracelessly as possible, through constant, prosaic conversation, so that half of the movie seems to consist of the characters explaining themselves to each other.

Thankfully, the other half of the movie consists of gorgeous imagery and spectacular action, often at the same time. Verbinski waits an awful long time to introduce his star, but he makes up for it almost immediately, with a bravura sequence imagining what hell must be like for Jack, and repeatedly letting us see things through Jack’s addled mind, complete with hallucinations.

As in the previous few installments, everything looks great; even the most tedious scenes take place in gorgeous sets and involve nice-looking actors in gorgeous costumes. There isn’t a frame of the movie that isn’t a masterpiece of re-imagined period design, from Knightley’s darling Asiatic costumes, to the grime on the pirates’ faces, to the crazy sets of Shipwreck Island to the electric turquoise waters. There are literally so many wonderful set pieces that I hate to choose an example, for both reluctance to spoil anything and difficulty in choosing one of the best.

So yes, it’s way too long and way too confusing and can prove extremely tiresome, but it also features Jack Sparrow and Davy Jones sword-fighting atop a mast…while their ships are locked in cannon-blasting battle…during a storm….while being pulled down into a whirlpool…while every single pirate in the world and an armada of soldiers look on and wait for their turn. And that’s just the beginning of the climactic battle.

The acronym for the subtitle, At World’s End is AWE, which spells “awe,” which is the root word for “awesome,” which this movie undoubtedly is. Much of it is awesomely awesome, and some of it is indeed awesomely dull.

It ultimately amounts to strong evidence that too much of a good thing isn’t always wonderful, but, at the same time, it’s certainly preferable to not enough of a good thing, or too much of a bad thing.