Kraken Me Up

Yo ho!

Here's the problem with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. It's not perfect. The Curse of the Black Pearl was perfect.

The good: The references to the first movie are very natural (except maybe one) and feel like good fun rather than "We know this movie is not very good so let's talk about the first one a lot".

It's a good story. But it's a lot more front loaded than the first one was. 75% of the plot you get in the first few minutes. The Exposition Man shows up and tells Jack All About It. The first one didn't play all of its cards until well into the movie, and it was always an intersting scene when it did. Maybe this one hasn't played all of it's cards yet. There's always World's End next summer.

PotC1 had two sets of "Laurel and Hardy" characters, a good guy set and a bad guy set. I liked the good guy set rather a lot. They're the two haples soldiers who first confront Jack (Captain!) Sparrow at the dock of the Interceptor. The bad guy set are the two wacky pirates, the bald guy and the guy with the missing eye, who kidnap Miss Swann. Well, they good guys are pretty much the only members of the original cast who do NOT return (and I'd imagine that stings a bit) but the bad guys are pretty good in this second one. They do interesting things and I'm suprisingly happy to see them on screen.

The GREAT: They didn't dumb down Will and Elizabeth at all. I was afraid that they would suffer under the weight of the Mighty Captain Jack. Both are more interesting for thier flaws and thier virtues (heh, and that's a bit of an understatement). Governor Swann does a nice job as well. And Mr. Gibbs is as cool as ever.

DAVY JONES! There are maybe three fx shots in PotC1 that I don't like (I can think of two right off the bat). That was when perfect looking movies had really become expected rather than anticipated. And the Ghost Pirate effects were pretty stunning. Davy Jones and his Amazing Digital Head blow them all away. Bill Nighy plays Capt. Jones (last seen as Slartibartfast in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - and he's the best thing in that movie too) and he plays him to the hilt. And even though he has his ADH you can tell it's HIS performance. There are bits where the camera gets three inches from him and it all still holds up. Every twich every blink every glare. It's awesome. This will set a new bar.

The swordfights! Unlike a few other action sequnces, the swordfights pretty much find the magic line that the first movie did. The action is amazing, over the top, but something makes you believe it. In the first one there were a few Amazing Deeds that were accompanied by Capt. J looking around with a look of "WOW! that was hard! I can't believe I managed THAT!" There is the water wheel fight (it's in the trailers) that goes RIGHT up to the edge and then winks at you. (I realize that this Edge is very subjective.)

The monkey! I'm not usually a monkey fan. But this was really well done. And it leads to the best line in the movie. (Ok, second best.)

The music! A little undermixed (what score isn't these days?) but some COOL stuff. I can't get the Kraken theme out of my head.

The Bad: The day after we saw the movie, She Who Is My Wife and I commented that we both liked the movie a lot, but we couldn't stop thinking about the bad stuff. The biggest problem is that the Framework of the first movie is gone. The first movie had Amazing things happening in an otherwise grounded real world. In this movie the world gets a little bit more Amazing. And without the grounded Framework, the Amazing seems Ordinary. It's REALLY annoying.

Remember the edge I talked about before? (Go back and read it again, I'll wait.) There are a few place that just jump right over it. There is the need to be BIGGER than before. FIGHT that need, darn it! It's James Bond syndrome. After you make Thunderball, you feel the need to make You Only Live Twice. The Spy Who Loved Me is followed by Moonraker. If we blew up a building, the next time we have to blow up a city.

Capt. Jack is WACKY. Well, sure. But he's also a great pirate, and kind of a mean old bird as well. (Oh, back to The Great - He is SUCH a mean old bird, he's almost dislikable. I loved it.) It's a credit to the first one that they knew how far to play Jack's Antics. And while Jack was funny, the gang around him wasn't in on the joke. There's a little too much Wacky Fun in this movie. And most of it was in the first third, which could have easily been removed, or at least trimmed, or at least made better.

The dialouge isn't QUITE as punchy this time around. There's not nearly as much quotable material. We haven't stooped to Star Wars Prequel level, but it's not classic either.

It's interesting when Nobody Characters manage to make an impression - when we show up on the Black Pearl in this movie, the crew feels different. Missing something. (Maybe it's just Anamaria is missing. Two plucky black chicks is too much for a movie?) I figure Jack just got more hands on board, but it's jarring. It was kind of like in The Matrix: Reloaded (ergh) when all of the grizzled extras from the first movie were replaced by shiny hollywood people.

It was a really good movie. Maybe even great. But it was the sequel to the best Big Summer Movie of the 21st Century and I saw it the week after Superman Returns. They need to get thier act together by next summer.

Spoilers! (Inviso Text!)

NORRINGTON! Whooooooooo! I'm not sure that I cared for HOW he gets to where he is in this movie (the whole East India Company plot is a big problem for this film. And why the heck did he leave his sword? It was HIS sword!) but once he's there - oh MAN! He even gets to make an Entrance! I will be very much looking forward to what happens to him in the next film.

The fruit fight was horrible. It was the kind of cartoon action that the first movie avoided.

Bootstap Bill was not quite wasted, but not as well used as he should have been. And NOBODY seems really suprised to see him! That should have been one of the great "GASP!" entrances!

No more cliff-hanger endings! You want to know how to do a cliff-hanger? Go watch The Empire Strikes Back. BIG unresolved plot points, but it had an ending. It felt like a whole movie. This one feels like it was holding stuff back, treading water, because that was for the NEXT movie.

And yeah, even though I guessed it was coming, seeing

(no really, this is the spoiler section - here be monsters!)

Capt. Barbosa make his big entrance, apple in hand, was a bit of a thrill. That's the problem with trilogies - if you want to do a reprise, it feels like it's way too soon to be looking back to the "good old days". Movie three is too soon to bring back the bad guys or the stunts from movie one. (Return of the Jedi, anyone?) Movie FOUR, or certainly movie FIVE - THEN it's exciting. As it is, there's a bit of a "didn't you just leave"? But Barbosa could certainly be an interesting foil for Jack and the gang. Kind of like Norrington - put him somewhere different than the first one.

Ah well, drink up me hearties, yo ho! (You know, for all the stuff from the ride that was missed in the first movie but put into this one, WHERE DID THE SONG GO?)