Review 267: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is a ginormous mess of a film; an overproduced, overlong, convoluted, sluggishly paced and overall a miserable and frustrating conclusion to a lighthearted adventure series.

Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander) gains power over Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), and with the help of Jones' ship, the Flying Dutchman, he is now executing his plans to extinguish piracy forever. To stand against the East India Trading Co., Will (Orlando Bloom), Elizabeth (Keira Knightley), Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), and the crew of the Black Pearl set out to rescue Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from Davy Jones' Locker. As one of the Nine Pirate Lords, Jack is needed in order to summon an ancient goddess with the power to defeat Beckett's forces.

The plot is a borderline, incomprehensible mess as well as being a joyless bore. It ends up being the most protracted and most confusing film of the trilogy, which is saying a lot. 
How is it possible to make a film this extravegantly loony and yet sooooooooooooooo boring? 

The pacing is agonisingly sluggish to the point of painfully boring According to producer Jerry Bruckheimer is necessary to make the final battle work in terms of build-up, the problem is this so called "build-up" is both clunky and clumsy. Nothing feels as though its being properly "built-up" and  this mostly comes down to film feeling protracted and that's because they spend so much time on overlong scenes and dim witted jokes. 

Thirty minutes into the film we're re-introduced to Captain Jack inside Davy Jones' Locker and then we're treated to a scene with Multiple Jacks Sparrow's (I wish I was making this up) due to the fact that he's gone loopy during his time in the locker. The scene feels self-indulgent and silly. It also goes on for seven solid minutes and kills the already slow pacing stone dead! And twenty-five minutes later we're back in the real world. Added altogether the sequence inside Davy Jones' Locker goes on for fifty-five solid minutes and drains all tension and urgency and pacing from the film.
A weird running gag throughout the film along with the Multiple Jacks is that he has developed a bizarre and left-field fascination with peanuts. Why you might ask? Because it's an example of how little the writers care. It would also seam that the filmmakers are really pushing it on Round 3!

The biggest problem with this film is the setup. This big showdown between the Pirates and the East India Trading Company - there's been no real buildup to it, it just feels completely off the cuff and left-field, in other words, I wouldn't expect this simple pirate movie about pirates trying to lift a curse to lead to this epic showdown. I mean it wasn't pre-established in an earlier instalment in the trilogy so it comes right the flip out of nowhere as a result. Because the the big, epic, climax between the Pirates and the East India Trading Company just feels empty and devoid of any tension or excitement. The East India Trading Company are the villains because they're bastards. 
What I mean is, when the spectacle is there, it's beautifully crafted and amazing to watch. But the problem is this film is trying too hard...   It's trying to hard to be grand and epic.
Whilst you're  watching this spectacle you're constantly being distracted by elements that just don't make sense.

As if this set-up wasn't convoluted enough, throughout this film the characters spend so much time betraying each other because they have their own agendas which I guess was an attempt on the filmmakers part to deepen the characters and add a sense of moral ambiguity to the trilogy but it ends up doing is making the character unholly unsympathetic and unsympathetic and it makes tough for us as an audience to root for them or know who to root for. 

Possibly the biggest crime this film commits is that it completely undermines the ending of the first film. At the end of The Cure of the Black Pearl, everyone is happy and everything was neatly resolved.

Without delving too much into spoiler teritory but At World's End has now completely butchered that ending with an ending that is a massive downer to what's supposed to be a lighthearted adventure series.

Returning director Gore Verbinski's direction is positively bonkers, the cinematography is beautifully vibrant, the score by Hans Zimmer is spectacularly grand, the special effects are admirably stellar, the production design is fantastic, the make is rich, the costumes are magnificent, the action scenes are spectacularly  exciting and well choreographed. 

The best thing I can say about this film is that, Johnny, Orlando, Keira & co do their best with the material they're given, which isn't really saying much considering all the characters start betraying one-another 

Possibly worst character arc in this film is Will's as he betrays his friends & comrades just so he can save his father from Davy Jones.

The film also shamelessly wastes the talents of actors Jack Davenport, Jonathan Pryce and welcome newcomer to the series Chow Run-fat who are criminally under-utilised and reduced to mearly plot points within the larger context of the films convoluted narrative.

A particular low amongst this cast of talent is a glorified cameo from the Rolling Stones Keith Richards as Jack's father Captain Teague which is an incredibly self indulgent in-joke about how Depp's portrayal of Captain Jack is based on Richards.

1/5. 

The Anonymous Critic.