Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest 6. It's a pity Jerry Bruckheimer didn't learn something from Quentin Tarantino... Just because you have enough actual film to make two movies doesn't mean you should. A well-edited Dead Man's Chest would have made a very nice first hour of a 3 hour long Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (the third movie of the series). Instead we get a heavily stretched and padded, mostly action, movie with no real climax. DMC suffers from the classic "oh my god, the first movie was a hit; now we have to write a sequel!" dilemma. The story is almost non-existant, the dialog is ill-conceived and forced, and instead of giving real thought to how the characters in the first movie would progress to this one, we've decided to make little tweaks to their established personalities to suit our purposes here. That kind of lazy shit chaps my ass. About the only thing in this movie that I enjoyed unreservedly was Davey Jones who, along with his crew, was a miracle of modern special effects technology. I couldn't tell where the makeup prosthetics ended and the CGI began. That, combined with the actor's excellent skills in projecting emotion, even through half an inch of latex, really sold the character... even if I couldn't really tell if I was supposed to like him or hate him. No question, the special effects were top notch and lent a fair amount of believability to the movie, and the fight scenes were well done (though way, waaay, waaaaaay too long). Did I mention the fight scenes were too long? They were.

I looked forward to DMC, but it ended up being yet another of this summer's movies that didn't quite live up to expectations. I can recommend seeing it only because you're going to be lost going into the third movie (which, thankfully, we're only going to have to wait a year for), and because this visual feast should really be appreciated on the huge screen.  ¶ 3:05 AM